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POEMS 

®H Dariaiis Subjects; 

BY J.C.PICKETT, 



Lieutenant of United States Artillery in the war of 1812 ; 

Secretary of State of the State of Kentucky, 1825-28 ; 

Secretary of the United States Legation to Colombia, 

1829-33 ; Superintendent of the Patent Office, 

1835; Fourth Auditor of the Treasury, 

1835-38 ; Plenipotentiary to Ecuador, 

1838; Charg6 dAfniires to 

Peru, 1838-45; &c., &c. 



1887. 



POEMS 

n fariBits Siifcrftts; 

BY Jf C^TICKETT, 



Ijieutenant of United States Artillery in the war of 1812; 
Secretary of State of the State of Kentucky, 1825-28 ; 
Secretary ofthe United States Legation to Colombia, 
1829-33 ; Superintendent of the Patent Office, 
1835; Fourth Auditor of the Treasury, ,^,. jfCon- 

1835-38; Plenipotentiary to Ecuador, \S^^' ^ '^% 

183^; Charge d' Affaires to J •'''7 

33 Peru, 1838-45; &c.,&c. ^,, ^^^ 



.r'7^ 



Caiitents. 



Piige 

Man's Wants 7 

Eve and Doctor Young... 8 

Poetical Decency 10 

Rich and Poor 12 

The October Rain 13 

Vanit}', Vanity 10 

Mutability 18 

Clorinda 20 

Warren Davis 22 

Silver Dimes 23 

Marriage 24 

Earthquake 26 

The Hog 28 

Much and Little 30 

Virgil, Horace, Niebuhr, 32 
Longfellow and Tenny- 
son 34 

The Ancient German 

Women 36 

yEneas Goes to Tartarus, 38 

The Andes 40 

Laziness and Other 

Things 42 

The Good Parson 46 



Page. 

Invocation 48 

Coal 49 

The Hot Weather 51 

Old Age and its Mise- 
ries 58 

The Light Brigade 71 

Justum et Tenacem 72 

Chimborazo 73 

Economy 77 

The New Purchase 79 

Adversity 83 

The Cold Weather 85 

Health 88 

Mild Confiscation 90 

The Dog 92 

The Pyramids 95 

The Press in Spain 96. 

The German Bards 97 

Anvil or Hammer 97 

Kant's Triad 98 

Egomet [Myself) 99 

Two Visits 100 

To Phenissa 103 

Maximilian 104 



In The Andes, page 42, Sillero, is the chairman; Coclnero, tho cook; 
Cirgneros, baggage-mea; Criac^o, servant. 



xthtt. 



The author of these poems, if poems they can be called, 
is in bis seventy-fifth year, is no poet, and has no poetical 
pretensions. His rhymes have been written merely to kill 
time, which has been killed about as Macbeth killed sleep. 
The author is not one of the wise men of the country, but 
still he has rather too much discretion to think of making a 
poetical reputation after he has passed his grand climacteric, 
passed long ago, and got into " the lean and slipper'd pan- 
taloon," there remaining only one stage more for him, 
according to Shakspeare, " mere oblivion," and that can- 
not be far off. 

All these poems have been written within the last eighteen 
months ; three fourths of them within the last six months. 
The author claims for them that they are moral and decent, 
and beyond that he claims nothing. He does not sell his 
book, but gives it away. Therefore if any donee finds it 
not to be readable, he has at all events the consolation of 
knowing that he is nothing out of pocket, and the author 
has it also.' 

Washington City, Mai/, 18(37. 



^acms 



MAN'S V/ANTS. 

" Man wants but little, nor that little long:"' 
Thus wrote a favorite, favor' d son of song ; 
A wise man, too, or one reputed wise. 
Who thought and look'd with all his mind and eyes — 
Doctor Edward Young, author of Night Thouf/hts ; 
An admirable poem, with but few faults,* 
But notwithstanding and nevertheless, 
Deferentially 1 say, and do confess 
That in all this wise man sung I can't concur ; 
To his hypothesis I must demur ; 
But dissent modestly, don't controvert, 
Which would be rude, pragmatical, and pert. 

It seems to me men want much and want it long, 
Thus differing from this potent man of song. 
He comes into the world helpless and forlorn, 
Naked and wailing, on his natal morn ; 
Needing all tilings, clothes, nursing, fobd, and air: 
Which all go to work and sedulously prepare ; 
And he wants daily, hourly from that day on, 
'Cill his last breath's exhal'd and ever gone, 
And he consign'd to his long resting place ; 
And most of all he needs God's pardoning grace. 



*.\mong the few faults avehiseomparingthe rising sun to a drunk 
ard's face, and making the Duchess of Porthmd and the moon 
rivals. He decides in favor of the Duehess, and thinks the moon 
would be complimented by calling her the " Portland of the skies." 



8 

Without that his case is hopeless, miserable, bad, 
Unpromising, unamendable, and sad. 

The great poet was a man of many needs ; 
A man eloquent, and doer of great deeds, 
If such it was to preach eloquently, finely. 
And to sing mellifluqusly and divinely. 
Yet numerous wants the poet had himself — 
Station, livings, honor, fame, and pelf; 
Though, like Lear, he thought "old age superfluous," 
And that for old men to die was virtuous. 
• Of old age the glory is to wish to die," 
Said he. 'Tis not the wish of many, nor wish it I. 
Yet he lived to the age of eighty-four. 
And would have, could he, liv'd full eighty more. 
Wanted place, pensions, honors all his life. 
Though with but one child and no living wife. 
This I name not by way of reprehension. 
But just to show, without ill intention. 
What men are. All want, and get whate'er they can. 
And hold on to 't till death comes — this is man : 
To this there is rarely an exception. 
There are a few — George Peabody is one. 
I write this seriously, but not morosely. 
Dr. Holmes has sung man's wants jocosely, 
In a neat, amusing, and short poem. 
See his works — of course you all well know 'em. 



1 



EVE AND DOCTOR YOUNG. 

Of "wanton Eve's debauch" sings Doctor Young — 
Strong with the pen, and fluent with his tongue — 
In his Nig?it Thovghts, a poem great, grandiose, 
Though in blank verse, which to many is blank prose. 
Thus to malign our great progenitrix 
And on her name this damning stain to fix 
Seems to me to be out and out a libel, 



'"^ 



With no warrant for it in the Bible; 

Gratuitous, ungenerous, and ungracious, 

Rash, unconsidered, and audacious. 

Strange that one who sang so well of charity 

Should have perpetrated this barbarity : 

A woman's reputation to impeach, 

And she six thousand years beyond his reach, 

And^his he wrote more than a hundred years ago : 

But time, nor tide, nor wit can make it so. 

Eve sinned. Her crime was disobedience, 
And to her God sin enough in all conscience. 
'Tis useless to attempt to make it worse, 
Whether attempted in potent prose or brilliant v^rse. 
She was alone ; a woman, without adviser. 
For Adam of the danger fail'd to advertise her. 
Left to herself and to Satan's machination 
What wonder that she thus undid creation ? 
Was idle, wanted to be knowing, wise, 
As does ev'ry woman till the hour she dies ; 
And this error, if one, is pardonable ; 
For men would be wise, too, were they but able. 
1 like not the nocturnal thinker's hardness, 
And his uncharitable waywardness. 
Milton, as intimately as any one, 
Knew Eve; drew her portrait, and 'tis well done: 
"Spotless innocence and simplicity" 
Were hers; and as yet unalloy'd felicity. 
The tempter had not enter' d Paradise, 
The father of all villainy and all lies. 
Bless'd she and Adam in their "nuptial league," 
Nor thought they of harm, or of covert intrigue. 
Resplendent in her nudity divine, 
Like an angel or a seraph did she shine. 
Her charms from God, and not from crinoline. 
Of body pure and soul immaculate, 
Bless'd was she, and bless'd her spouse and mate. 
The world was not yet ruin'd for all time to come, 
Lisalvable by Luther or the Pope of Rome ; 



10 

And by one only who came long before 
Either, and will live forever, evermore. 
Guilty of the imputed wantonness, was she not, 
If I comprehend what the historian wrote. 



POETICAL DECENCY. ^ 

AiJuf jicv^yap o\(oXev. 

I do not understand, I cannot see. 

Why decent poets ever write indecently. 

They say that they are votaries of the muses ; ' ^ 

Who says these are not decent he accuses 

Them wrongly, and the right of speech abuses. 

They are modest and accomplish'd ladies, 

As by all their biographers said is ; 

Or if you choose, then call them goddesses ; 

This they are without crinoline or bodices. 

Their costume is ncrt the fashion of this day, 

But is now just the same it was alway ; / 

A little scant, but yet enough to hide 

What they do not choose should be espied. 

They had their dwellings in sundry places ; 

Of these there may be now but few traces. 

Parnassus, Helicon, and Hippocrene, 

If now found, the mu^es will not be seen. 

'Tis doubtful if they live except in song; 

But in that they are destin'd to live long ; 

As long as poets are and poets sing 

Through the wide world their sacred names will ring. 

that some of their vot'ries were more decent! 

1 trust that of their ribaldry they did repent 
When in extremis, and about to go 

To the realms above or to the pit below. 
Chaucer, of English poetry father call'd. 
And by consent thus honorably install'd, 
Indulg'd by far too much in ribaldry; 
For frequently by far too ribald he. 



11 

That he wrote four hundred years ago 
Is no excuse, nor can be receiv'd as so. 
Decency is of all ages and all time, 
Whether the author writes in prose or rhyme ; 
And to violate the rule prepensely 

^Is to offend against good taste immensely. 

"Dan Chaucer, well of English undefyl'd, 
On fame's eternal bead-roll worthy to be fyl'd." 
This was said of Chaucer by Dan Spenser ; 
Both great poets and ingenious men, sir. 
Indecency is not a thing to boast of, 
Which the low and vulgar have the most of. 
If 'tis right this vulgarity to practice 
'Tis right to practice all. This the fact is. 
Pope said, "Want of decency is want of sense," 
And yet committed he the same offense, 
And in s6me instances atrociously ; 
For which rating he deserved ferociously. 
What shall I say of that great genius Dryden, 
In whom the English take, and justly, pride in ? 
He was not decent, and could but know it. 
For well he knew good taste — no better any poet. 
And Shakspeare, top, call'd often the divine, 
Said when dying there was not a single line 
Or word that dying he would wish to blot: . 
If he said so, he must have then forgot 
Some passages in his grand tragedies 
That have not a due portion of the decencies ; 
And this made Ben Jonson say right out. 
To have blotted at least a thousand he ought. 
Venus and Adonis is not decent. 
If I know what by decency is meant. 
Byron, too, has err'd with malice and prepensely, 
And sinn'd 'gainst decency most intensely. 
Went self-exiled, said "Native land! good night,'' 
Then wrote from grief and spleen and spite. 
To this I might add many a lesser star ; 
But I come to grieve, not to make war. 
Why could not all write like Milton, 



12 

Cowp.er, Scott, Wordsworth, Tennyson, 

Crabbe, Southey, and many another one? 

Who, whilst nobly building up the lofty rhyme, 

Admitted in their works no filth or slime. 

They thought and wrote with equal purity. 

No indecencies, no incongruity, 

Hid elaborately in obscurity. 

To stimulate the ingenuity 

Of those who fish for filth, and always find it; 

As the prurient poet first designed it. 

Chaucer had genius, so had Doctor Swift; 

But all their genius will not serve to lift 

Their ribaldry from out the mire, 

Where it is buried, and where it ought t' expire. 

So short is life, so transitory man, 

That he should ever be as decent as he can. 

It is a thing he can't well overdo ; 

And reader, now the ribalds I will leave to you. 

Decide upon them as you may think their due. 



RICPI AND POOR. 

" When God built up yon dome of blue, 
• And peopled earth's prolific floor.I 
The measure of His ivisdom drew 

A line betwixt the rich and poor; 
And till that glorious dome shall fall. 

Or beauteous earth bp scarr'd with flame, 
Or saving love be all in all, 

That rule of life will be the same." [Milne. 

Poetically these verses I think tine. 

And willingly in that sense would make them mine ; 

But then the theory that they contain 

Would make me willingl}' give them back again. 

God surely built yon glorious dome of blue. 
And peopled, too, the earth's prolific floor; 
All this He did, but did, I think, no more ; 
He drew no line betwixt the rich and poor: 
The curse of poverty lies at man's own door. 
There were no rich, no poor, by God's ordination, 



13 

But were of man's own perverse creation. 

He made man perfect, upright, good, and just; 

From that he fell through folly, pride, and lust 

Of things prohibited and illegal. 

Then lost his nature pure and integral; 

Lost by one act tlie glory of his station, 

And then follow' d swift degeneration. 

Then came, too, error, wickedness, and vice, 

Wrath, murder, theft, lies, and avarice; 

And thence distinctions 'mongst the classes rose. 

The rich and strong were the dite, and those 

Who were nor rich nor strong despised men — 

Thus these distinctions had their origin 

In men's misfortunes, perverseness, and sin. 

God neither counsel'd nor commanded this ; 

He made man perfect and the heir of bliss. 

And to arraign Him as the author of our woes 

Is error at the least, as the right reasoner knows, 

Drought to know ; nor charge upon his God 

The laying on of the chastising rod 

That has been man's scourge six thousand years 

Of toil, of suffering, sorrow, tears. 

They are of the fruit that grew upon that tree 

Which, by the first man eaten, made him see 

His own, and soon the fall of all mankind. 

Whom he to wratli hereditary had consign'd 

By one rebellious, disobedient act. 

Which he might repent, but C3uld ne'er retract. 

And hence the line between the rich and poor, 

There fix'd forever and forever more ; 

Or till that glorious dome of blue shall fall. 

Or gracious saving love be all in all. 



THE OCTOBER RAIN, 18G6. 

"Pluvicegue loqiiaces 
Bescenderej'ugiH et garrulua ingruit iinber." [Gray. 

Rain, rain, rain. 
It has been pouring, pouring down three days, 



14 

And eke three nights, yet pours always, 
Without a single hour's intermission, 
Leaving things in a most humid condition 
"Water, water everywhere. 
As said the Ancient Mariner,^ ^ 
In S. T. Coleridge's all-absorbing story, 
Which added much to his poetic glory; 
Water to drink, to wash in, and to swim in ; 
Water for men, horses, children, women ; 
And yet it comes faster, faster, faster, 
Ominous of impending disaster. 

Rain, rain, rain. 
Still incessantly it pours, poui's, and pours 
In heavy unintermitting showers ; 
Plashing, dashing, raging, driving, smashing 
All things afloat, and all things crashing. 
Three days ago all was sunshine, gladness ; 
Now all is water, mud, gloom, and sadness. 
The world apparently is full afloat ; 
The thing most in demand is now a boat; 
Water, the article oft most needed, 
Is unappreciated and unheeded. 
Except to avoid its numerous treacherous traps ; 
The cause of multitudinous mishaps. 
Water is king; he full command has gotten, 
And land is now dethron'd as well as cotton. 

Rain, rain, rain. 
'Tis thundering, light'ning, blowing, flowing; 
The rain in torrents comes, and still is growing : 
No mitigation yet perceptible. 
None tangible and none ostensible ; 
And we should trembling think of Noah's flood. 
But that the covenant must stand good 
That protects us from a watery catastrophe. 
But one by fire at any time may be ; 
And fire, though fierce, is scarcely worse 
Thau such deluges as do now immerse 



Streets and houses in an inundation. 

Sauve qui pent is our sad situation. • 

Matters now are very moist and critical, 

As we perceive old, young, middle-aged, sundry, all. 

Rain, rain, rain. 
Now every paltry puddle is a pond, 
And ev'rypond a navigable lake, 
And ev'ry lake an improvised sea ; 
So this as now may be calFd a lake country. 
Three days ago the filamentous rills. 
That like threads of crystal trickled from the hills. 
Are rushing, gushing, roainng cataracts now. 
That have o'erflooded all the plain below ; 
A plain just furrowed by the colter's steel 
Is now invaded by the sea-ship's keel. 
No labor, or a h^^Q of cultivation. 
And all is mud and watery desolation. 
For this the remedy is to endure it, 
For wishing, hoping, praying, will not cure it ; 
And human energy cannot insure it. 

Rain, rain, rain. 
Still down it pelting comes, amain, amain ; 
Oh that we could once see the sun again ! 
But yet not the least sign of a cessavit, 
"Tis all just as the water gods will have it. 
Pouring still, still comes the wide diffusing flood, 
And there is one vast manufactory of mud. 
Things that love the water love not so much. 
Save the fishes, frogs, and our friends the Dutch, 
Who are both terrestrial and aquatic, 
Like the Venetians in the Adriatic. 
"They are amphibious in their nature. 
And either for the land or for the water ; 
Do not live on land, but go aboard :" 
For this we have an English poet's word. 
I quote him, but do not indorse his wit, 
Believing none, or very little of it. 



16 

The rain is o'er, fair weather has come at last, 

The danger a,nd the inundation both are past; 

The sun again has shown his radiant face, 

So long averted from our anxious gaze. 

Rapidly the waters are subsiding, 

The roads will soon be fit again for riding. 

Neptune and his half-man, half- fishy train 

Have left the land and gone to sea again. 

The plow once more cuts through the moisten' d soil, 

And Ceres is propitious to the sons of toil. 

Note.— This being a poetical description a little exaggeration may 
be tolerated. Without any, the facts are that it rained about sev- 
enty-two hours almost incessantly, and generally in a very earnest 
manner. I suppose that never before has so much rain fallen in 
Washipgton in the same time. 



VANITY, VANITY! 

Omnia vanitas. 

Tell me the value of this rotund earth, 

Of all that it contains or e'er brought forth. 

Its whole intrinsic and conclusive worth ; 

Of all that creeps or flies, or moves thereon, 

Or sails, or rides in coach or cars upon ; 

What worth when all's accomplish' d and all done? 

Australia's unexhausted mines of gold. 
And California's wealth, as yet not told ; 
When all is got and lost and spent and sold. 

The countless treasures under lock and key. 

With all that we imagine or we see. 

Of what worth they, or can they ever be ? 

Of all great London's wealth, too vast to tell. 
Where all is that one can buy, or one can sell ; 
Where some in palaces, some in hovels dwell ; 



17 

Golcomia's diamonds, and those of Brazil, 
From mines work'd by a greedy tyrjiiit's will ; 
What worth they if tall-masted Hoets ihey fill? 

Or if as pur» as the celestial horses' shoes, 

Sung by Cowley, or by Cowley's muse, 

In his Extasy, a poem odd with odd views?* 

The treasures wrung from Asia's opulence. 

By this or that nefarious pretense, 

By means defenseless and without defense. 

All that hot Hastings or that grasping Cllve 
Derived from all their wrongs, or could derive, 
What worth to them now dead, or when alive? 

Or all the loolie and jilunderings in Oude 
By Napier, able, needy, brave, and proud. 
And to none second in the fighting crowd? 

And all the booty hoo]i\l from the Chinese, 

A feat perform'd with wondrous speed and ease: 

The sad cause, opium and its miseries. 

And all the robberies, stealings, villanies 
Accomplish' d on dry land or on the seas — ■ 
What, I ask, the true value of all these? 

And what to France eventually will be 
Her present chief's political iniquity, 
Although the nephew of mon oncleX'ie maybe? 

He is not the miracle some take him for, 
A lover of the game, but not a god, of war ; 
He may yet "be hoist with his own petar." 



* Cowley snys in his Extagy, that his "horses were of temper'il 
lichtninar made"— 

They were all shod with diamond, 

Not such as here arc found. 

But such light solid ones as shine 

On the transparent rocks o' the heaven crystalline. 



18 

And what avails the transitory fame 

Of any great, specious, and imposing name 

Won by felon deeds, and enjoy'd in shame? 

Vanitatum vanitas it all is. 

Worth nothing in the next world or in this, 

And well exchang'd for one hour of real bliss. 

A Roman emperor said, omnia fuit ei nil 
Expedit. He could command to save, to kill ; 
There was no law except his sovereign will. 

He wore upon his brow the diadem imperial, 

And donn'd the purple rich, majestical: 

All these were his, and nothing were they all. 



MUTABILITY. 

Tempora inutanter et mutamur cum illis. 

Spenser wrote a poem on mutability, 

A subject of much suitability. 

All things in the world are subject to mutation : 

A fact defying all refutation. 

The infant changes soon to bearded man. 

And so 'tis since first the world began: 

All human beings, saving only two, 

Have gone this transmutation through. 

Adam started complete in every part. 

Limbs, lungs, liver, muscles, nerves, and heart 

Was form'd with unimprovable proportions, 

Without fault, or excess, or distortions ; 

All correspondent' all symmetrical, 

Well-plann'd and well-compacted all. 

God himself the unerring architect. 

In him there could have been not the least defect. 

Some curious and fantastic analyzers. 

Not men of sense, but mere subtilizers. 

Have rais'd question about the first man's navel. 



19 

Whether he had one or not I can't tell ; * 

Nor could they I humbly apprehend. 

Each for his theory may contend, 

But finally the contest must all end 

Just where it began. May the good God send 

Such investigators a quantum more of brains, 

And then they will gain something by their pains. 

All is change — on earth, in air, in sea, 
All that has been, or that will ever be. 
With the germ commences mutability, 
A plain and absolute necessity. 
A small seed becomes in time a great tree, 
And thus the change goes on to infinity. 
The Washingtonia Giganfeaf even, 
The most towering tree known under heav'n. 
Was once a seed extremely small. 
And now the monarch of the forests all. 
The whale, the elephant, once mere monads. 
But years, days, minutes to their bulk adds. 
Until they came to be of size stupendous. 
And characteristically tremendous. 

There is on earth no quiet or stability. 
This is not allowed by Mutability. 
Change is the order, change without cessation, 
Or pass quickly to annihilation. 
Ev'n one hour's pause of sun, or moon, or star. 
Or earth, in their precipitate career, 
Would throw all things out at once of gear. 
And produce confusion by man irreparable^ 
But as he can't repair to confuse he is unable. 
Change, constant change, is all creation's law; 
The powers that attract, that move, repel, and draw 



* Sir Thomas Browne, in Vulgar Errors, discusses this question — 
says the navel was not necessary to Adam and Eve; but think:- 
Adam " had kind of umbilicality with God." I cannot undertake 
to say what that was. 

tThe English call this tree Wellingtonia Gigantfa; but as it is an 
American tree, the correct name is Washingtonia Gigantea. 



20 

Are acting ever, and will forever act. 
With motion, force, and speed adjusted and exact. 
' They are not changed from their first estate, 
But by their change their bging do dilate, 
And turning to themselves at length againe 
Doe worke their own perfection so by fate." 
Quoting these four lines from Spenser, I decline 
The laws of change any further to define. 
Change, he thinks, conduces to perfection, 
And from this I indulge in no defection. 



CLORINDA. 

S'ctjJre il cielo ; io vado in price. 

Heaven opens, I depart in peace. 

[Last -words of C . 

Had I nine daughters and never a son, 
Whereas no daughter have I, never had one, 
If I call'd all Clorinda 'twould not be ill done. 

Of Jerusalem Delivei'ed, Tasso's great heroine, 
One of the greatest in song or in prose to be seen,. 
Equal to any that now is, or has ever been. 

She was of noble and of royal origin, 

A king her father, and her mother queen, 

And of such lineage worthy she, I ween. 

Dedicate to war and to virginity, 

A pearl and paragon in truth was she, 

And the exponent of true chivalry. 

She fought for Mahomet 'gainst the crusaders, 
Against their allies, their helpers, and their aiders, 
And roughly handled soldiers and their leaders. 

Their helmets well hammer' d she and batter' d, 

Their best lances shiver' d she and shatter' d, 

And their mail'd squadrons routed she and scatter'd. 



21 

Though swift to strike was swift to mercy, too, 
Noble, chivalric, and heroic, true, 
Vast admiration on herself she drew. 

^' She with the Christians had encounter' d eft, 
And in their flesh had open'd many a gate 
By which their faithful souls their bodies left." 

This says Fairfax, Tasso's translator. Tasso, he 
Says this : '^Altre volte d di lor ynembra asperse 
Le piagge e Vonda di lor sangue a mista.^^ 

She sent many Christians up to heaven, 

Their souls passing from the wound that she had giv'n ; 

She died a Christian, though, which made the account 



Clorinda was by the great TancreA slain, 
A hero free from all reproach and stain. 
Who learn' d what he had done with poignant pain. 

He did not recognize her in the melee 

Of that bloody and most murderous day, 

And from her wound her soul quick pass'd away. 

Of the thousand fine things in the Jerusalem 
Clorinda's acts and death are parts of them — 
Beauties that all praise, and that none condemn. 

She in exlremis was baptiz'd : 'twere long 
To give the reasons all, but they were strong ; 
In Tasso you can see them : here ends my song. 

Postscript. — Pity that this fair, chaste, fighting 
Maid lives in no legend, history, writing. 
And is but of Tasso's fanciful inditing. 

But still this bright and beautiful ideal 
Transcends almost all we read that's real, 
And will be read till of song the end we see all. 



22 



WARREN DAVIS. 

Those who knew Warren Davis well, well knew 
A man sans reproche, honorable, and true ; 
True to all engagements, true to party, 
Giving a generous support, and hearty, 
To measures that had in view the public weal : 
On those that had not he quickly turn'd his heei. 
A politician, but not the slave of party ties, 
He was inflexible, as he was fair and wise. 
He was an able man, and most reliable ; 
But in no way sequacious and pliable. 
For himself, and sometimes for others judg'd ; 
Would give advice, did not obtrude, nor grudg'd 
When ask'd for, as it often was, for he 
Was of acknowledg'dand first-rate ability. 
Knew men, knew things, could into motives look^ 
And never a hutnbug for a sound man took. 
Well understood the interests of his State, 
South Carolina, prosperous then and great ; 
Since overwhelm' d with so sad and hard a fate. 
But let us hope that she will quickly rise. 
With new prospects, hopes, and energies. 
Warren was a scholar, critic, and grammarian; 
A Greek scholar and a Latinarian. 
In a discussion about the force of languages 
With an admirer of those of Rome and Greece, 
He contended boldly that the Anglo-Saxon 
Was inferior to none known beneath the sun 
For strength, expressiveness, and brevity, 
Though of incomparably less grandaevity. 
The other quoted, as unanswerable, the line 
Which is classical, polish' d, flowing, fine : 
Vidrix causa Diis placuit, sed victa CatonV 
'Tis, said Warren, of unquestionable beauty, 
Not one word too many, nor one word too few ; 
But still I do not yield the palm to you. 
Journeying townwards t'was my chance to meet 
A pedestrian damsel, trim, fair, and neat, 



23 

About to wade a stream that between us flow'd, 
Somewhat swollen, across the public road ; 
She took the water without hesitation, 
Not at all caring for the situation ; 
She waded, and as the water deepen' d she 
Raised to suit the times her drapery ; 
Cross' d safely, saluting and saluted, I 
Ask'd, with reference to the flood, how high ? 
And the price of butter at the market town ? 
Quickly she answered, without smile or frown, 
'' Up to the waist and sixpence." And this claim I 
As more terse and forcible than the victa Catoni. 
If my antagonist will beat it, then I 
Will from the contest and the arena fly. 
The circumstantes were the jury, who 
Decided for Davis at the first view ; 
And in their verdict render'd I concur, 
As respects brevity, without demur, 
Though an admirer of the Latin line, 
Which is forcible, elegant and fine. 

Note.— Warren Davis was a member of Congress forty years ago 
from South Carolina. lie died long since. ^ 



SILVER DIMES. 

Sine argento, sine momento. 
No cash, no influence. 

Make your dimes and save ; then give your dimes, 

All that possibly you can spare ; 
Then will you know in future times 

What heav'nly blessings are. 

Dimes, though individually quite small, 

May come to be a swinging sum ; 
Many have started with nothing at all 

And come to be lords oi&plum. 



24 

One single dime is treasure somewhat small, 
But well worth having when well got ; 

Many a babe may come to be six feet tall 

Who might have been put in a two-quart pot. 

But dimes to thrive must be well won, 
And afterwards must be well giv'n; 

Then you'll hear, " Faithful servant! 'well done; 
Enter iuto the joys of heaven." 

John Wesley, than whom no truer man 

Ever liv'd on this terrestrial bull. 
Said, "Make, save, then give all you can. 

And if you can, then give all." 

We in this life are but the steward, 

The estate and title are in God ; 
Distribute then according to his word, 

Or feel His vindicating rod. 

But we must keep some as well as give, 
For should we give all, and nothing keep, 

Then men will work but just to live, 
And all the world will go to sleep. 

In these tough, tight, tugging times, 
Which soon may or not soon mend, 

You'll find a bag of jingling dimes 
A useful and convenient friend. 



MARRIAGE.— [Tlie Lady speaks.] 

[Translated from Chaucer.] 

Marriage is so great a sacrament 
That he who has no wife seems to be sent 
Into the world without purpose or intent; 
Helpless he lives, and all desolate — 
I speak of folks in the secular state. 



25 

Ciive, then, attention wliilst I clearl}' show 

A wife to be a crowning gift to man below: 

When God saw Adam, new, naked from liis hands, 

He thought to put him into nuptial bands ; 

And he in great goodness then resolv'd 

To make a wife — a wife from his own flesh cvolvM, 

And so without delay he gave him Eve, 

The best gift lie could invent or could give. 

A wife! Holy Virgin! Benedicte! 

How with a wife liave aught but felicity? 

A man's wife is his helpmeet and support, 

His happiness and his supreme comfort.' 

With a wife I see, and all must see, too, 

There can be but happiness between the two. 

Heart cannot think, nor can tongue tell 

Their pleasure when they love each other well. 

She saves his goods and helps him to amass, 

And is satified with all that conies to pass. 

She says never nay when he says yea : 

Do this, says he. 'Tis done as you wish, says she. 

order blissful ! wedlock glorious ! 

hajjpy husband he if but uxorio.us ! 

So much the state is happy and commended 

That he that's in it never wants it ended. 

And on his knees he thanks God all his life 

That he has sent him the treasure of a wife ; 

Or ever prays that he will kindly send 

One to last sans fail to his own life's end. 

His life is such a bless' d security 

He fears nothing for present or futurity ; 

And if he counsels his wife in all affairs 

He nQed have no adversity or cares. 

But high as Goliath may hold up his head. 

If he just carries out the views or said or read. 

Do always as your wife says, then never 

Will you miscarry, and are safe forever. 

Suffer thy wife's tongue, so Cato writ. 

And you shall ne'er repent of it. 

Let her command in full always, yet she 



26 

Will obedience give from courtesy. 

Said he, '■'■Uxoris linguam sifrugi est 

Ferre memento.'''' This his views in Latin dress' d ; 

If frugal, let her tongue wag as she thinks best. 

Better for your comfort 'tis, and for your rest. 



EARTHQUAKE— TEMBLOR.* 

To feel a rampant, roaring, genuine earthquake 
Is to feel what makes one to shudder and to shake, 
And will his nerves, though of iron, rudely shake. 

On the first symptom the cry is temblor! temblor! 
A word which all in every tone do roar. 
And then tumultuously make for the door. 

They stand not on the order of their going, but go 
At once, as Mrs. Macbeth told her friends to do, 
And struggling crowds now rush and fly and flow. 

• 
They all are making for the church and street ; 
Friends know not friends when now they meet, 
And neighbors do not neighbors stop to greet. 

Soon are the churches to o'erflowing full. 
And then they struggle, push, and pull, 
And vainly try to be compos' d and cool. 

Safe they are, some think, if in a church ; 

But they are often left thus in the lurch, 

And do not the safety find for which they search. 

For churches, like hoiises, sometimes topple o'er, 
And bury in the ruins many a score. 
That nor sun nor daylight will see more. 



* Temblor is the Spanish word for earthquake, and is pronounced 
tcinhlore, the accent on the last syllable. 



27 

The liusband oft forgets his cherish'd spouse : 

Such his haste to gain the street and leave the house, 

His duties conjugal cannot liis spirits rouse. 

No son takes his Anchises on his shoulders, 
As soon would he think of carrying boulders ; 
He cares not now for talkers or beholders. 

The dogs with pendant tails howl in the street, 
No tail is wagg'd when dogs each other meet, 
All are seeking to make good their own retreat. 

The horses from their stables break away, 
Having an inkling that the deuce is to pay — 
They go and return not till another day. 

The birds fly shrieking quickly to and fro, 
Knowing well there's something wrong below ; 
But what, their science gives them not to know. 

Some become now gious and fanatic, 

Santos and beatas are ecstatic ; 

And the scene is ludicrously dramatic. 

The uproar ends, and there's an end of quaking. 
And for the present of th' uncomfortable shaking, 
And all are to their homes themselves betaking. 

Sometimes none are swamp' d in the melee, 
But none can fairly undertake to say 
They may not be dish'd next shaking day. 

Then there may be a gen'ral boideversement, 
And thousands to the Umbo patrum seiit, 
And some, it may be, to another element. 

Sometimes the natives get off for the fright, 
Then they regard it as a matter light. 
But do not wish to see again that sight. 



28 



1^0 many things we pay in life, encore! 

Which means just this : sing, say, or act it o^er; 

But of an earthquake — jdease give lis no more. 

"Tis all huTibub wild, terror, dust, and din. 
With prayer, penitence, and intermitted sin, 
Which last to-morrow may again begin. 

W^hat causes earthquakes? Electricity? 
Some say th' incursion of th' irruptive sea ; 
Some, elastic vapors seeking to be free. 

Some molten matter going to and fro 
That does like subterraneous rivers flow, 
Causing earthquakes wheresoe'er they go. 

Or are they chemical and geologic, 
Or explosive wholly and volcanic, 
Or supernatural and diabolic? 

About this the savants do not quite agree — 
They have broach' d many a theory. 
And still the cause we do not clearly see. 

But see or not, the earth will shake sometimes 
To let off steam, perhaps to punish crimes, 
Or give a fool a subject for dull rhymes. 



THE HOG. 

The subject now taken by me for my theme 
Is one we don't admire and can't esteem ; 
But though'wanting in respectability 
He compensates it by utility. 

The hog's an animal less scarce than singular, 
One fitted more by far for peace than war ; 
Though, if the wild boar of antiquity 
Be his progenitor, a fighter he. 



29 

TIio wild boar of Aetolian Calydon 
Was ready for a fight, and would seldom run. 
So formidable he with tusk and snout 
He sometimes put liis brave assailants out, 
And sent men, horses, dogs to right-about. 
The hog, though a huge feeder, is no epicure; 
He cares not for viands elegant or pure, 
Or recherche, or costly, or even clean. 
Give him but enough, and however mean 
Or rough or filthy down it promptly goes; 
For nought offends his palate or his nose. 
He is omnivorous, and on all he thrives, 
And to convert all to lard he soon contrives 
By some active, assimilative process, 
For which men seem not the organs to possess. 
A man may eat each day a Sybaritic dinner, 
And yet the more he eats he grows the thinner, 
No matter be he sage, or saint, or sinner. 
Elia (Charles Lamb) tells how, in an essay, 
Roast pig was first discovered in Cathay; 
That is, China. I can't the story here recite, 
Being too long ; but my readers J invite 
To buy it, beg, borrow it, and read it, 
And they'll admit few tales exceed it.' 

"The hog that plows not. nor obeys thy call, 
Lives on the labors of this lord of all,"- 
And lives in clover till the day of doom 
Consigns him to the powdering tub, his tomb. 
To be taken thence, and smok'd and hung, 
And then, as ham, be eaten or be sung; 
Assumes also other forms of bacon, 
Which millions do their dinners make on. 

In South America they think pork cause is; 
Of leprosy, a most abominable disease. 
I did not come myself to that conclusion. 
But thought pork eaten in more profusion 



'Pope. 



30 

That disease would cure, or would prevent, 
Being caus'd by want of wholesome nutriment, 
And by short commons, filth, and carelessnessi — 
But this is not a theory — 'tis a mere guess. 

Now, we have at home trichiniasis, 
Which a curious and inscrutable disease is, 
Thought to be caused by eating diseas'd pork ; 
In that case a perilous and fatal work. 
"Tis not, I think, as yet well understood. 
But ham some take to be pernicious food. 
Hog I have been eating seventy years. 
And still having of trichinse no fears. 
Meanwhile the doctors argue, but do not agree. 
But soon they will emit some theory ; 
But be it as it may, it is all gammon. 
And we will still make our dinners ham on. 

In Edmund Spencer's Faerie Qucene we learn 
A witch into a hog a man did turn ; 
An enchanter restor'd him to humanity, 
Which he complain' d of as an injury, 
And implored to be sent back to his sty. 
'Twas done, that he there might live and there die. 
His name Gryll ; was Gryll a wise man or an ass? 
This I leave to him who more wit than I have has. 



MUCH AND LITTLE. 

'A little learning is a dangerous thing. 
Drink deep, or taste not the Pierian Spring." 

These two lines of Pope have puzzled many 
But T doubt if there's much puzzle, any, 
When properly considered, and well understood. , 
The poet could not mean that things pe)- se good 
Were bad unless extensive the supply ; 
I doubt this, and go further : I deny ; 
Pope had those persons doubtless in his mind 
Who to use all things badly are inclin'd, 
Whom ever moderate draughts inebriate, 



31 

Make pedantic, and leaves tliem in a state 

Which makes the weak yet weaker than before 

They drank. Such had best abstain ; the more 

That they imbibe the more they will be worsted. 

And for such unlucky that they thirsted. 

But they who are discreet»may driilk little 

And be the better, 'T would not their brains uiisetll*! 

Help them rather. The vain and the pedantic, 

The half-witted, fetuous, and romantic 

Had best from the famous spring abstain : 

They can't be ever soberiz'd again. 

I urge it as a general proposition. 

That of things good little is an acquisition. 

A half loaf is better than no bread, 

As all know who have been famished. 

Better a little money than an empty purse. 

By all the world regarded as a curse 

And such an unmitigated evil 

That it is call'd conventionally, the devil, 

A little rain is oft desirable and good, 

Whilst none would wish to see old Noah's flood. 

A little sense is better than stupidity, 

A little dlothing better far than nudity ; 

A little light is better than no light at all; 

A little bitter than a quart of gall ; 

A little honor than be wholly destitute ; 

A little manhood than to be wholly brute. 

And so it is of almost everything 

In spite of Pope and his Pierian spring; 

Round which the muses, alias Pierides, 

Kept watch, and drank and sung quite at their ease. 

They were proof against intoxication, 

And never went beyond exhilaration. 

They could not drink enough to turn the brain. 

Nor must they sober get to drink again. 

Pope among the learn'd was not erudite. 
And many scholars left him out of sight. 
Not so learn'd he as Cowley, Parnell, Dryden, 
And many highly educated men. 



.^9 



Of loarning lie had enough, but others tlian 
He drank deeper at the same spring Pierian. 
"Twas his genius plac'd him at the liead 
Of living poets, and before many dead: -■ 
That and his fine judgment poetical, 
Which but few possess' d, or none at all. 
So, 'twas not deep potations at the spring 
That made his name and fame so widely ring. 
Some men very small have been vastly, great : 
Alexander, Aristotle of the Grecian State; 
And Napoleon, victim of relentless fate. 
Tom Moore, in the poetic world once ruler, 
Was threatened to be put in the wine-cooler ; 
Such his diminutiveness; it was meant 
For fun, the threatener, George, Prince Regent. 
So, in spite of Pope and of his spring 
Pierian, I think a little learning a good thing. 



VIRGIL, HORACE, NIEBUHR. 

Niebuhr, who for learning and acumen 

Is in the rear of none, or -but few men, 

Says plainly in his researches Roman, 

What not he,' and what in fact no man 

Can persuade me is the truth and whole truth ; 

What I think now when old I thought in youth. 

He says, then, that Publius Virgiliiis 

Is inferior as a poet to Horatius, 

Whom we for short Virgil and Horace call, 

But do not improve their names by it at all. 

And says that Virgil should, what he intended 

Once to do, have done — his fame and glory ended 

By consigning to the honor of cremation 

The ^Eneid, as he had in contemplation. 

So 'tis said. I doubt the tradition, or on dit 

Whose age, for verity, I take not as guarantee. 

In ancient times some great lies were told. 

For this the modern is not much before the old; 



And when erabalm'd in Greek or Latin 

It was stereotyp'd, and as if burnt in ; 

Like the Victoria portrait for George Pealjody, 

Which is now in liis hands and custody, 

And is to last a long time, but how long 

None know. But this is not essential to my song. 

For myself I cannot be persuaded 
That such a thought had e'er invaded 
Virgil's mind, thus to make himself/eZo de se, 
x\nd burn to ashes his fine poetry. 
P^or me it is neither true nor ben trooato, 
Although Niebuhr read so, said so, thought so. 
That in some things Horace excels Virgil 
I agree, as I apprehend that all will. 
The first for fine epistles and keen satires 
Delights mankind: none of reading them e'er tires. 
I say the same, too, of his polish' d lyrics, 
Deserving, getting endless panegyrics. 
But in epic song I doubt if he could, did, 
Or tried to rival Virgil's ^neid. 
Nor could Virgil have equal' d his epistles 
And his odes, by side of which penny whistles 
Are the odes of other builders of the rhyme, 
And this will be so in all future time. 
Virgil rode quite a different Pegasus ; 
On which he journey'd to Parnassus, 
Where they both arriv'd, and are there yet. 
If we should any value on the old creeds set. 
Poets are often dull, taste-lacerators : 
Good or bad according to their gifts and natures. 
Homer wrote his grand imperishable song, 
And yet in small things might not be sweet or strong. 
Tasso his worid-renown'd Jerusalem, 
A lasting, brilliant, and enrapturing gem, 
In smaller things was less felicitous. 
Being about them not so solicitous. 
Milton shines greatest in the Lost Paradise, 
Was not so lofty when he left the skies 
And took to subjects ephemeral and terrene ; 

3 



34 

Few bards in all things excellent have been. 
Newton was great in gravitation, fluxions, 
Light, and mathematical deductions ; 
But when he turn'd Bible commentator 
He was in a field he seem'd not made for. 
So quit all : was made Master of the Mint, 
And put his heart, purposes, and soul in 't. 
There was but one great genins that I know, 
Great in all ; that was Michael Angelo ; 
Painter, sculptor, poet, architect was he, 
And in all excellent to a high degree. 



LONGFELLOW AND TENNYSON. 

Arcade^anibo et cantare pares. [ Virgil. 

Much I read Longfellow and Tennyson, 

Pleas'd with both, as must be every one. 

Poets are they, coin'd in Apollo's mint; 

Why can't I write as they do? The plague's in't. 

But few, however, can, and my misery 

Finds mitigation in much good company. 

I see, or think erroneously I see, 

A likeness 'twixt Longus Comes and T. 

L.'s name the London Times thus latiniz'd 

When that sheet thought it had capsiz'd 

Hiawatha, calling it nonsense, bosh, and hunlami, 

Which angered some, titillated some. 

But Hiawatha well could stand such small shot 

Come it from boastful Briton or from canny Scot. 

They use fifteen syllable lines and blank verse, 

Which we must take for better or for worse. 

We find them notwithstanding always better, 

And except to neither, matter, words, nor letter. 

Still lines pentedecasyllabical, 

Or what the poets them otherwise may call, 

Are somewhat hard on lungs asthmatieal, 



35 

Be tlioy hilarious or elegiacal ; 
Yet read we delighted, read and still read, 
Admiring the flowers, finding never a weed. 
Their greatest glory is their purity. 
Praised now, and to be, in all futurity ; 
I mean as long as poetry is read 
Of authors living or of authors dead. 
In their sixty thousand verses, that is, lines, 
There is nought that an assembly of divines 
Would anathematize or would condemn, 
And this what their readers say of them. 
However long the poem or the lines 
We read all, all absorb'd, and give no signs 
Of nonchalance, fatigue, or lassitude ; 
And at the close say 'tis pure, noble, good! 
Doctor Johnson poets metaphysical 
Call'd some; these two are pure and classical. 
1 stop short of Judah P. Benjamin, 
Who dipp'd so deep the sad rebellion in. 
He says God inspires Laureate Tennyson, 
Which is too much for any poet under th' sun, 
Judah is ardent and enthusiastic, 
And when he lays it on he lays it thick. 
Which is the way, 'tis said, to make some stick. 
When he goes in, he does it to go through ; 
To retrograde, or flinch, or pause won't do 
For him : his motto is, success or ruin. 
When in a cause that cause he's true in. 
Come back, Judah! Your country will forgive you; 
Even your late foes will a welcome give you. 
Yourself you can soon rehabilitate. 
And reach again your former palmy state. 
A man can have but one country ; yours is here. 
Come, then, inspir'd by hope, discarding fear. 
The exile's bread is ever bitter bread, 
As all who've known what 'tis have said. 
Think of Ovid, Dante, of Napoleon, 
Of Themistocles, and many a worthy one. 
"What though the field be lost? All is not lost." 



36 

Let the field go. Things of value and of cost 
May yet be yours — honor, wealth, and happiness, 
Which but few exiles can or do possess. 



THE ANCIENT GERMAN WOMEN. 
A Fragment. 

■X- * * * * -if ■)«• ' 

Her locks are such as German heroines wore 
A score of centuries ago, and more ; 
Those heroines who, like the bravest, fought 
When cruel, sanguinary Rome had sought 
Their country to subdue and subjugate — 
To make a Province of the German State. 
Bravely fought the Germans for then- fathe7'land : 
With patriotic hearts and ready hand. 
But all their glorious, daring efforts fail'd 
When by great numbers and by skill assail' d ; 
Which made the conflict one of fearful odds, 
Nought saying of the fiat of the gods. 
The women shar'd the fate of all the rest; 
Had bravely fought, bled, died, among the best. 
Their country's cause was lost, they could not fly ; 
They would not yield, but they could die. 
Slavery they fear'd, but death they did not fear. 
Then without flinching, fearing, pause, or tear 
Themselves suspended they with their own hair — 
An exit glorious, which will well compare 
AVitli all that's grand, heroical, and brave. 
Not willing to survive what they could not save. 
And having fought most nobly by the side 
Of fathers, husbands, brothers, sons, they died, 
Not with them, or by Roman sword or spear. 
But by act heroic of supreme despair. 
Suicide is wrong, divines and casuists uay, 
To which I interpose, nor yea nor nay ; 
Do not apologize, do not defend. 



3T 

Do not take sides, condemn not, nor commend. 
But was this suicide? We well may doubt; 
For 'tis not easy to make it fairly out. 
Victims these heroines were of a hard fate ; 
Die they must, or live to contemplate 
Their country's ruin'd and degraded state. 
On their behalf might rigid censors find, 
If charitably, gen'rously inclin'd, 
Extenuations; I do not say to justify, 
But at least to mitigate and mollify 
The harsh impeachment of sad suicide 

Against these victims who so nobly died. 
■X- * * * * -x- * 

Got back from this digression, hard to do, 
From German heroines, though to speak of you. 
And that best spot on this terrestial ball, 
Creme de la creme, and garden-spot of all. 
I speak, you know, of Lexington, Kentucky; 
By preeminence and position lucky 
As a central point of territory ; 
Great in bullock and in blue grass story, 
And all sorts of agricultural glory. 

* * ■» * -:f * * 

The head ne'er was on which e'er grew 
Locks of more charming or exquisite hue : 
Fine, golden, flowing, glowing, silken, soft, 
Many, many times have I admir'd, and oft 
Wonder' d what a cliarmante Parisian belle 
Would for them o^er were they but to sell. 
Large sums, beyond all question and all doubt, 
To ornament and rig her cranium out 
For soire6, opera, salon, or bal par4, 
Or any divertissement by night or day. 
What would she give? Ten thousand fraucs I'm sure. 
And thus by purchase fairly make secure 
An article beautiful at once, and pure. 
Unsophisticated, unfactitious ; 
The thy^g of which she's most ambitious. 



38 

She values "diamonds, emeralds, and so forth, 
But such a head of hair regards as more worth. 

Belinda's locks, which she so highly priz'd, 
As in Pope's Rajie of th' Lock we are advis'd, 
Rose up to heaven, was made a constellation ; 
And held worthy of the exaltation, 
As Berenice's locks had done before ; 
Which is recorded 'mong the myths of yore. 
And these three locks, now consecrate to glory, 
Shall long live in mythologic story. 
For ages when the rhymer who now holds the pen 
Shall have pass'd for aye from 'mong men. 



^NEAS GOES TO TARTARUS. 

^Eneas went to Tart'rus by Jove's permission. 

To see of things the status and condition. 

He wish'd to find his sire, and make inspection 

Of sundry matters, following his own selection. 

He went, saw, returned. Whilst there he saw Dido, 

Queen of Carthage, whom he deserted, as you know. 

She gave him righteously the cold shoulder. 

And their interview grew cold, and colder 

Till brok'n off. -^neas pleaded strongly 

For reconciliation — said she judg'd him wrongly ; 

That he left her in obedience to the gods, 

Who have the power to use, and use the rods 

When any dare to be recalcitrant : 

Rebel they may, but then resist they can't. 

He lied at Carthage to her, and then down there ; 

To do which all deceivers ready ever are. 

What hearts they break, the deaths they cause, not 

caring ; 
Nor truth, nor God, nor man, nor justice fearing. 

Old Charon ready was with his old boat, 
A ramshackle craft, not easily kept afloat. 



39 



He takes you in, and taking tlien his fare, 

With a few strong pulls you are landed there, 

In Pluto's dreary, sad dominions. 

Where are ghosts of all opinions, 

Of all degrees of merit and demerit. 

Which some possess per se, and some inherit. 

There, too, is the fara'd lihadamanthus. 

The judge who tortures and extorts confession ; 

And so goes he on in endless progression 

In all the adjudications in his court ; 

There being no reporter there is no report. 

Much injustice then is most surely done, 

As in all courts whose doings see not the sun. 

Thus 'twas in the Star Chamber Court of Albion, 

By which countless deeds of wrong were done. 

So in courts calFd of High Commission, 

Where caprice, not law, made the decision. 

And above all the courts of Inquisition, 

Whose acts were worse than the tradition 

Of them. Machinery diabolical 

To oppress, rob, murder, good, bad, all 

Who had property to be confiscated ; 

If not, then they might be liberated. 

These engines were of Priestcraft and the State, 

And met at last a well-deserved fate. 

Down they went 'midst general execration 

Of the British and the Spanish nation. 

]jong they rul'd, they slaughtered, and oppress' d 

At Satan's instigation, not God's behest. 

Men can never so fall off and retrograde 

That priest and tyrants can revive their trade. 

If more you wish to read, and more to learn 
Of iEueas, see Virgil. He tells of his return, 
And what he saw at that far distant bourn. 

I don't mean to say that England had an Inquisition 
Like Spain. Without that, bad was her condition, 
'Till the year sixteen hundred eighty-eight. 
When William Tliird purg'd and reform'd the State. 



40 



THE ANDES. 

Non cuivis Jiomini contingit adire Corintlimn. 
It does not happen to every man to travel in the Andet. 

He that has journey' d through the Andes 

Has been in what an interesting land is. 

There he finds lofty mountains everywhere, 

With valleys intervening here and there; 

The mountains, many, huge as high Olympus — 

Jupiter's headquarters, as the poets tell us; 

Were he three times loftier than he is, 

And none would mountains higher wish than these : 

Sorata, Illimani, are the highest peaks 

That nature formative has in her freaks 

Produced. These, with the Himalaya, are equal 

The loftiest nam'd in works geographical. 

When at a distance they sublime appear — 

Vast and gigantic when you are more near; 

Uprising in imposing majesty 

They seem not to, but aim to, reach the sky. 

A thousand miles of land you may go through 

And have ever some of these full in view ; 

And after they are scal'd, and you descend, 

You find in tropic scenery large amend. 

You come to regions grand and beautiful, 

Gay, joyous, lovely, the same ever, never dull. 

I rode one August in a storm of snow 

O'er a high mountain, and found a plain below 

Where citrons, oranges, and pineapples grow, 

And crystal rivulets that ever flow ; 

The climate such as one would wish to make it. 

And would never willingly forsake it. 

These climates are enchanting and seductive, 

Where one might wish to die, but first to live. 

Much of the amenities of life are there ; 

Gay flowers and luscious ft-uits throughout the year : 

Ambrosial odors ever in the balmy air ; 

Perhaps a snow-crown'd mountain full in sight. 



41 

Which gives to the landscape yet more delight ; 
And in the forest birds with plumage bright, 
Not gifted though with powers musical, 
As are the songsters in lands more boreal. 

The mode of traveling is outside a mule : 
A safe beast, but sometimes quite hard to rule. 
More than the horse he is recalcitrant. 
And submits because resist he can't; 
Is admirably cautious and sure-footed ; 
If he be gentle you could not be better suited. 
It is slow traveling, there 'tis poco dpoco, 
Which means leisurely ; that is, very slow. 
I made a journey once, was a month upon the way, 
Not constantly, nor even every day. 
You travel a few days, and then you rest, 
And get fresh beasts', which is found to be the best. 
The distance was about two hundred leagues, 
With sundry accidents, and not few fatigues — 
About one day's journey now in railroad car : 
This the difference 'tween this land and (hat there. 
No steamers, i-ail, or coaches in that region, 
But obstacles to travel counted by the legion ; 
A few steamboats on rivers here and there, 
But slow of speed, uncertain, and high of fare. 

Once I travel' d through a region mountainous 
Six days and never saw a single house ; 
Now and then I came upon a tambo, 
A large shed, as you may or may not know. 
In this you may eat, sleep, take your ease, 
And thankful be for this, such as it is. 
Travelers can't ride there on or mule or horse. 
So rough and wild the country. You have no recourse; 
A stout Sambo, half Indian and negro half, 
Was my horse, and mounted thus I could but laugh 
At my equipage: "twas so ludicrous; 
But in such cases no use to squabble or discuss. 
For me better than walking was any kind of riding ; 
So I mounted, in my steed confiding ; 



42 

Suro-footed, agile, and athletic he, 

And took me through with much facility. 

You ride in a light cane chair, back to back, 

And you look at the pass'd, not the coming track. 

My suite was a sillero, cocinero, 

Three cargueros, and a criado. 

'Twas pleasant traveling, though rough the road, 

And rude ray men ; but for the service good. 

Tigers and lions fierce the wild infest; 

But I saw none, and men they seld* molest. 

Deer, too, there are, and birds abundant. 

And multitudes of the industrious ant. 

Their works are wonderful — if truth 1 tell ; 

Some might think, as Munchausen I lie as well. 

Some are warlike, will attack and fight you. 

And if you don't retreat will badly bite you. 

Some forests impervious are, and if you 

Wish to enter cut you must your way through. 

I tried it once with machete, but the ant 

Tribe attack' d and fairly drove me from their haunt. 

I must stop here, though I could a volume write 

Upon this theme — no room more wonders to indite. 



LAZINESS AND OTHER THINGS. 

'Tis part and parcel of the Universal Plan, 
A lazy man cannot be a happy man ; 
Thus 'twas at the beginning of creation, 
And was in God's eternal contemplation. 
All is action, motion, and mobility, 
And without them all, all is futility. 
All moves from orbs of vastest magnitude 
To atoms that our vision can't include 



*Seld is used by Fairfax in his translation Jerusalem Delivered fo 

fldatn. 



43 

Within its range, such is their parvitucle. 
Dead quiescence, and its effect, stagnation, 
Have no phice: there must be animation 
Of some kind. If no true vitality 
There is yet action, progress, in reality. 
The metals in the dark unfathomable mine 
That never shone, and that may never shine, 
They are obedient to the universal law. 
Whence all their force and their direction draw. 
Adam was not lazy when in Paradise ; 
He had much to do, and much to surpervise. 
He look'd after all, his garden kept in'order. 
From center to parterre and border. 
And then the beasts, of whom he had temporal rule- 
He the teacher, they the pupils and the school — 
He had continuous, not onerous occupation, 
By God's decree, and by his ordination. 
He had time for rest and relaxation, 
For mild mirth and festal recreation. 
He had occasionally a matinee. 
And then at times well suiting a soiree. 
His guests were such beasts as might be present, 
And converse social made all things pleasant. 
There was the great "unwieldy elephant," 
The noblest of all beasts all writers grant. 
He made with his "lithe proboscis great sport'" 
For all. Milton says it, and vouches for 't. 
Our great first sire no clothing had or wore, 
And would have thought a shirt at best a bore. 
He walk'd, work'd, s\ept in pur is nafnralibiis, 
And 'bout his toilet had no trouble and no fuss. 
It was the same with Eve ; her loveliness 
And her charms were, not jewels or rich dress, 
But in her grace and in her innocence, 
Too soon to be trepann'd into great offense. 
She err'd, she sinn'd, she falter'd, and she fell, 
And gave up heaven for a fair chance of hell. 
O fetal act! th' effect of laziness, 
She was idle, foolish, and I must confess 



44 

She was the cause of our uuhappiness. 

She listen' d to the tempter, had no occupation, 

And of course succumb' d to the temptation. 

'Twas laziness, too, that caus'd the fall of Troy- 
The laziness of that handsome, worthless boy, 
Prince Paris, who, not having aught to do, 
Travel'd the various Grecian kingdoms through; 
Visited all the cities and the courts, 
Then, as now, of rich idlers the resorts. 
There with beauteous, vicious Helen fell in ; 
They met, lov'd, and soon indulg'd in sin ; 
And then fled from the court of Menelaus, 
And sought at Troy protection and applause. 
Then came the fatal war that level' d Troy 
With earth ; and all for that pernicious boy. 
Great Hector died, his sire and hia crown to save, 
Among the good, the best, and bravest of the brave. 
He is the first of heroes ever painted, 
Or prais'd, or sung, or canoniz'd, or sainted : 
Barring he was not a Christian ; for then 
Our pure religion was unknown to men. 
He fought, he bled, he died in a bad cause ; 
Knew it, but duty, loyalty were his laws. 
Enough for him that Troy his sword needed ; 
All else he heard not, or 'twas, if heard, unheeded. 
Says Homer, the best of omens is to fight 
When your country calls, be she wrong or right.* 

Here I frankly will observe that I am 
'Mong those who believe naught of good Pi'iam, 
Nor of Hector, Paris, or Achilles, 
Of Ajax, Agamemnon, or Ulysses: 
Fiction all, and nothing but a great master's story 
Of grim and gory war and ghastly glory. 



^ Ilonner s words are : Eif otwi/oi apiaros aixwecOat nept narprj^. 

[Iliad. 
' Without a sign his sword the brave man draws, , 

And asks no omen but his country's cause. " [Pop/-. 



45 

- The moral is tliat idleness the mother is 
or countless crinles and countless miseries. 

I have said that every atom in creation 
Importaiit is, and has a destination. 
It matters not whether a mountain or a mite, 
The law is just the same ; that law is right. 
The loftiest mountain will be leveTd with the plain, 
And never lift its lofty head again. 
The British isles, "fast anchor'd," as the}' are, 
Or as the Britons do themselves declare, 
Will one day disappear, nor leave a speck of land 
To indicate the spot where now they stand. 
All will be devour'd by the encroaching sea. 
Now surely eating them, but not vLsibly. 
This is as certain as geology. 
And needs not from me the least apology. 
My authority is Hugh Miller, a name 
Great in the science, and well known to forae. 
He says the process is now going on. 
And will go till all is eaten up and gone — 
All eaten by the sea, the "great blue dragon," 
As he calls this all-consuming element. 
Which nothing spares, and is with nought content 
But the absorption of a whole continent. 
Moreover, this great Federal metropolis 
Will also come in time, far off, to this ; 
And that bhie dragon whose voracity 
Is of vast and measureless capacity 
Will likewise swallow and absorb it all — ■ 
The White House, Smithsonian, and Capitol. 
No help, no injunction of the Court Supreme 
Can stop the process, or to stop it seem. 
Resistlessly it operates, and all will go 
Like bubbles, summer mist, or April snow. 
When will this be? I know not, but be it must. 
Or science otherwise we must distrust. 
Before it is, MacauTay's New Zealander 
In England must arrive, and then and there 
On London's vast ruins and its rubbish 



46 

May meditate, and angle in the Thames for fish. 

Enghmd goes first, then comes our turn ; 

Which need give us now but small concern. 

We shall not live to know or live to see it ; 

We can't avert, nor can we shun or flee it. 

Then let us bow to 't with due submission ; 

Obey, and set up no opposition. 

Where then Democrat, where the Radical, 

Conservative, and puzzling parties all 

That so vociferous are, so loudly bawl — 

Where ? Whither gone ? 

Far, far beyond this visible sphere ; 

But nothing more to us is full and clear : 
" To the islands of the blessed. 
To the kingdom of Ponemah, 
To the land of the Hereafter."'* 



THE GOOD PARSON. 

[From Chaucer.] 
■' Allur'd to brighter worlds and led the way." [Goldsmith. 

There was a man of piety and grace 
Had a poor benefice in a poor place ; 
Rich he in holy teaching, and in works ; 
Had learning, too — a model for all clerks. 
Christ's gospel, as 'twas given, he did preach ; 
His souls in cure devoutly did he teach. 
Gracious he was, and wondrous diligent, 
In adverse circumstances ever patient. 
Did ever any withhold his dues and rate 
He never sued, nor did he excommunicate ; 
But rather would give freely all he had, 



*Thc last three lines are the last three of "Hiawatha." All 
Kood and honorable men of all parties will one day join the son of 
Wenonah in the kingdom of Ponemah. 



47 

Alike to all, the worthy and the bad. 

Poverty was to him no stigma, no evil ; 

He haled only sin, and sin's friend, the devil. 

Not populous his parish, but still large ; 

Yet was he ever punctual in discharge 

Of all his duties; no weather could 'prevent him 

From constant visits, knowing that God sent him. 

In sickness and misfortune sure w;vs lie 

To seek the poor and humble, and of high degree — 

On foot, no chariot, horse, nought but his staff. 

This noble example, he to his parish gave: 

First he work'd, and afterward he taught 

That Christ with his own blood our souls had bought 

To which this figure he added thereunto : 

If gold will rust what will the iron do ? 

For if a priest, the oracle whom men trust, 

Be tarnish'd, humbler men will surely rust. 

And if the shepherd in his duty fail 

How can the sheep be sound and clean and halo ? 

The shepherd should the example give 

To his flock how they should act and how live. 

He left not his sheep to ravening wolves a prey, 

Seeking gold and preferment far away, 

At London city, and at St. Paul's to look 

For promotion, nor his charge forsook. 

Nothing ask'd of his superiors, or took, 

But stay'd at home, watch'd vigilantly his charge, 

And sent the wolves to roam and howl at large. 

He was a true shepherd, and no hireling hind, 

Who gave to duty body, soul, and mind. 

But though virtuous himself and holy. 

Indulgent he to the vicious and the lowly. 

In all his teaching plain, discreet, and mild, 

He drew, not drove, to heav'n man, woman, child: 

Good example was his favorite argument. 

Yet he could chide* did occasion fit i)resent. 

No matter of what rank the offender was. 

He censured for his Master's sake and cause. 

A better priest I fancy never was. 



48 

Or better advocate for religion and the laws. 
He ask'd not, wish'd not any deference, 
Coniplinient, flatter}', or reverence. 
Clirist and Him crucified he taught to all, 
But first he foUovved, then to them did call. 

Note. — Drydeii has made a poem of the Good Parson about throe 
times the length of the original, and a most beautiful poem it is. 
My translation is about J.he length of the original, and is pretty 
literal. 



INVOCATION. 

Guardian angels of the nation, 
Who look with approbation 
On onr country's exaltation, 

helj) us to maintain it ! 
Suffer no degeneration, 
No absurd infatuation, 
And no servile degradation 

That may blot or stain it. 

Goddess great of Liberty! 
Protectress of the brave and free, 
Aid the march of our prosperit}'^. 

And 0, protect us ever ! 
Guard us against tenierity, 
And all the folly we may see; 
O teach us what we ought to be, 

From it may we swerve never ! 

Gray-headed fathers of the land ! 
Take at once a patriot stand. 
And ready be w^ith heart and hand 

To aid in reconciliation. 
An aged, yet a useful band, 
Fit to obey and to command, 
Act now a patriot part and grand. 

Help now to save the nation. 



49 

Warrior great and patriot rever'd ! 
Though long deceas'd and long interr'd, 
Thy voice shall from the Hermitage be heard 

For Union and fraternity : 
That voice rever'd will sure be heeded ; 
Never were good counsels than now more needed 
By the impleading and th impleaded* 

Pcaue is our necessity. 

And he that was so long Kentucky's boast — 
Himself alone a phalanx and a host — 
Too early for his State and country lost, 

Had he surviv'd until this day, 
His warnings and his pleadings' eloquent 
Had made- those pause on mischief bent, 
Convinc'd the doubting, calra'd the violent, 

And stopp'd all belligerent array. 

Noble-minded, just, honorable, and true. 

Their country first, ever, and last in view; 

They "stood four square to all the winds that blew,"! 

And now are gone to their reward : 
Be they remember' d henceforth, ever — one 
For battles fought and victories won ; 
And both for great and noble actions done — 
Accept them and receive them. Lord! 
May, 18G6. 



COAL. 

Est naturae lex, 

Carbo erit rex, \_Anon. 

In Blackwood's Magazine 'tis said 
That coal ere long will fail ; 
. Then what will be the fate of trade 
When steamers cease to sail, 

* Impleading and impleaded: North and South, 
t Tennyson— said of the Duke of Wellington. 
4 



50 



Propell'd by the black diamond's force? • 

Or how journey oirthe rail 
When there's no food for the iron horse ; 
No power the trains to impel? 

But never fear, the forge and mill 

Will still go roaring on ; 
And trains go flying still 
When all the coal is gone. 

Geologists have said, 'tis true, 

That coal will soon be done; 
One hundred years, perhaps a few 

More added, then not a ton 
To be rais'd from earth's interior 

In all the time, if long, to come. 
It may be so ; but power superior 

Will avert the threatened doom. 
Then never fear, &c. 

We shall not be reduced to ride. 

Or walk, or row, or fly, or swim ; 
An unseen power will well provide 

For all; then put your trust in Him. 
Though coal become a curious thing. 

And worth its weight in gold, 
Yet Englishmen may safely fling 

Away their fears, told or to be told. 
Then never fear, &c. 

When God contriv'd the starry skies 

And this terrestial ball. 
Omnipotent, as well as wise, 

He provided well for all. 
To all He gave an atmosphere 

Containing all we need: 
Man has but to find and to prepare, 

Then will he be rich inde^. 
Then never fear, &c. 



51 

That great workshop, man's brain— 

With that he's ever trying, 
Experimenting o'er and o'er again ; 

Never flagging, never tiring. 
Before two hundred years are out 

Power will be surely found 
Worth all the coal, beyond all doubt, 
Tha': now is, was, ever under ground. 

Then never fear, nor forge, nor mill, 

Nor swift steamboat, nor train, 
Nor that devil's alembic, the whisky still, 
Will ever want power again. 



jf OTE — Tho author's notion is that heat and power abound m the 
atmosphere, and will be made available when all the coal is gone- 
some time first: in England one hundred years, m the bniteii tetates 
one thousand. Coal is one day to be king. 



THERMOPSIS : THE HOT WEATHER. 

Fervida sunt tempora, etfervidi sumus in illis. [Anon. 

About one thing all men just now agree— 
*' It is the hottest time we e'er did see ;" 

So say the old, the young, saturnine and jolly, 
The sad, gay, good, the votaries of folly. 
The heat is overpow'ring and oppressive, 
Unmatched, unmatchable, excessive. 
All objects now are nearly deliquescent, 
Threat'ning soon to be ia status evanescent; 
And we may fly off at some point tangential, 
Done into thin air- athing quite consequential 
On these red-hot times of melting tendency, 
Sirius being now in the ascendency.* 
The sun, the earth, the air, all are incandescent, 
And all the planets, oval, round, or crescent. 



« This is not astronomically true, or true in any sense. 



52 

Heat, heat is now the primary pow'r and finial, 
Unintermittent, scorching, and continual. 
The dog-star rages, Pandemonium islet out, 
And half mankind are mad without a doubt. 
As prove the deeds and doings transatlantic — 
Sov' reigns, subjects, soldiers are there all frantic f 
In Europe now the favorite occupation 
Is shedding blood and fell extermination, 
Peopling Pluto's dark and hot dominions, 
Peopled enough, as have it some opinions — 
A fact one day I may prove ocularly. 
Though this I say, of course, but jocularly. 

The dogs roam now about the streets close-muzzleo, 

Precaution with which they are quite puzzled, 

Not knowing why they cannot snap and bite, 

And, as usual, worry, tear, and fight ; 

The public good, the cause of the restriction, 

The muzzling, tying up, and interdiction, 

Is far too deep for them ; but will he, nill he, 

It must be so, or else the ball and billy 

Are their speedy and inevitable doom, 

AVhich makes for unsuspected dogs more room. 

Pitiable of the dogs the fate, and dire, 

Who are the object of policemen's ire : 

Quick and sure to Tartarus are they sped 

With all their imperfections on their head, 

Like King of Denmark, Prince Hamlet's father, 

As from Shakspeare's tragedy we gather. 

The bipeds next: men perambulate the streets. 
And passing friend, his friend but gruffly greets ; 
So vehement the heat, he can't afford the breath, 
And talking much is rather worse than death ; 
lilusing, puffing, gloomy, indolently slow. 
Along the burning pavement do they go, 
Bring up at the first restaurant they see. 
And call for something potent more than tea ; 
Refresh'd by suction and by potation. 



53 

On they go, and soon reach another station 
At which are sold ice and eke exhihxration ; 
Of these imbibing quickly more or less, 
They try the street again, seeking some recess 
Where shade and air, if air is to be found. 
Invite to rest refreshing and profound. 

'Tis for the ladies worse; for no degree of heat 
-Can keep them from their usual shopping heat. 

Out they go, with desperate intention 

To purchase things of which I make no mention, 

Not knowing what they are ; utilities 

Without doubt— they would not buy futilities ; 

But they find Sol's rays a little too inflictive, 
- And soon begin to feel somewhat vindictive ; 

Next they begin to warm, and then to melt. 

Feeling as they before had never felt; 

Down go their curls, their smiles go down, 

And instead there comes the umbra of a frown. 

Alas! that smiles should ever leave the female face 

Where naturally we look for loveliness and grace. 

A woman's smiles, all know who rightly prize her, 

Is of this world a potent civilizer. 

Her smiles do more than all appliances 

To win the savage, man, to due compliances. 

Vivent les doux sourires des aimabUs dames ; 

They are of life the great elixir and the balm. 
" The world was sad, the garden was a wild. 

And man, the hermit, sighed till woman smil'd." 

These are Campbell's lines as ev'ry one will know ; 

'Tis not within ray competency to write so ; 

I have not the art nor the pretension. 

Lack vovs (Greek for gumption) and lack invention. 

Whilst I write thus I grow enthusiastic. 
But find the heat by odds too drastic. 
Where shall T catch a little moving air ? 
I'll try the Capitol— our rulers now are there. 



54 

I go, but find not what I went to find, 

And not much entirely to my mind ; 

No " thoughts that breathe and words that burn," 

Though words there were that gave but few concern ; 

No Demosthenes, nor yet a Cicero : 

With heat were all oppressed and all aglow. 

I heard no Patrick Henry and no Clay, 

Respectively the great men of their day ; 

The first, the "forest-born Demosthenes 

Whose thunder shook the Philip of the seas ;" 

The last, great, daring, wise, and eloquent ; 

On his country's and his own fame intent, 

Oft had he filled the Speaker's curule chair, 

And as a Speaker was unmatch'd and rare ; ' 

He had no equal, rival, and no second, 

Was ever prompt, and ever facund, fecund. 

This last line to me sounds rather oddly; 

Is harsh, unmusical, but not ungodly. 

I find it often hard to make a rhyme 

With normal quantity, rhythm, and chime. 

Had Clay in '60 liv'd and '61, 

The deed I hate to name had not been done : 

No war, no blood, no ruin then had been ; 

No internecine conflict had we seen ; 

But his career was o'er, and he was gone, 

Nor had his mantle fall'n on any one. 

And also that great statesman, warrior, sage, 

Who dwelt and died at the fam'd Hermitage. 

His glory is his country's pride and treasure. 

Of hers he had grandly fill'd the measure. 

He kill'd that ill-starr'd and pernicious Bank 

That loudly in the nation's nostrils stank ; ^ 

Charter' d in haste, in error, and delusion, 

And went down 'midst infinite confusion, 

Down, down, to Milton's "lowest, lower deep," 

And there reposes in eternal sleep. 

On the "Eighth" he par'd the British lion's claws, 

Disabling thus his formidable paws ; 



55 

* » 

Drew out his teeth, curtail'd his royal tail, 

And sent the invaders flying all pell-mell ; 

Uais'd high his country's glory and her cause, 

And with his sword upheld her name, fame, laws. 

What Napoleon said of Frederic, I 

Say of him : Pity such a man should ever die ! 

Great was he on great, on all occasions great, 

The champion, guardian, watch-dog of the State ;^ 

Decus et tutamen too, if you like Latin, 

Which here comes classically and pat in. 

Had he, too, liv'd in 'GO, '61, 

Secession he had plac'd his veto on. 

And sav'd the South, as he befbre had done, 

At point of bayonet, with saber, shot, and gun ; 

Had sav'd her from the afflictive rod 

Administer'd less by man perhaps than God. 

But wo yet shall be one people and one State : 

A consummation, come it soon or late. 

Is sure to come — a fact as fix'd as fate. 

Thi^ I'll not see, being far into 74, 

And soon to sail for a far-distant shore. 

I go consol'd and firm in the belief 

This land is not foredoom' d to come to grief. \ 

I shaped my course next to the cemetery, 
Sure there of one good thing, good company. 
There all is calm, quiescent, and serene: 
It brings tranquillity to contemplate the scene; 
It leads to thoughts subdued, and meditation. 
Self-scrutiny and self-examination. 
You hear no voice and no articulate sound, 
But still amidst these sacred shades are found 
Lessons such as by mortals can't be given — 



*The Duke of AVellington was called the watch-dog of the State. 
It was said of him that while he lived the house (England) was safe. 
While General Jackson lived the Union was safe. 

tTheprophct Isaiah uses the words, "put to grief." 



56 > 

They are not of the earth, but come from heaven. 

A walk among the tombs is always good 

No matter what the person's mind or mood: 

It soothes the wounds of poignant, wasting grief;' 

To trivial, transient cares it gives relief, 

And small perplexities will wholly heal — 

I know, have felt, and others, too, may feel. 

If such your case, seek consolation from the dead ; 

They will not harm you; approach them without dread, 

Hence I to the city go. Oh ! 't is hot. 

How hot? Enough, I think, to boil a pot. 

This is a most intokrable line; 

But mind, my friend, the mercury's at 99. 

For me 't is hard to breathe, and harder still 

To methodize each line with care and skill. 

The air is in a state of calefaction 

Most unfavorable to cerebral action. 

Apollo nods, the Muses are asleep, 

And liveliest mortals can but crawl and creep.. 

No zephyr fans us, and no breezes blow ; 

It will not thunder, nor will it rain or snow. 

One word describes us — 't is stagnation, 

Which now torpifies th^ whole creation , 

Here. This city seems a city of the dead 

To-day; no noise, and those who make it fled 

To look for ice or drink or shady bower 

To help them to get through the trying hour. 

Sol's rays fcome down with such fierce radiation 

As leaves us in a very humid situation. 

But that which moistens us without, within. 

Concurrently must make us dry again. 

Now we're menac'd with roasting afid with ustion 

By speedy and spontaneous combustion. 

If ^olus or Neptune will not come, 

And by wind, rain, or snow avert our doom. 

I went to Arlington ; what saw I there? 
A scene impressive and beyond compare. 



57 

Eight thousand graves. Of whom are these the graves, 

O'er which the green and flexile grass now waves? 

The old, the young, the good, the great, heroes all, 

Whether by disease or bayonet, sword or ball. 

They fell — gave to their country all they could : 

Their hearts, their services, their time, their blood. 

What has their country done as yet for them? 

Not much that can be seen; but I will not condemn. 

With time there will be more — so let us hope ; 

With time our gratitude will have more scope. * 

Now, for each hero a painted name, a board. 

Is all- apparently we can afford. 

A painted notice, too, proclaims their fame, 

Though without epitaph or even a name — 

All quite too modest for such heroic dust. • 

But in the nation's gratitude I'll trust. 

And hope there will be some commemoration 

More worthy of the dead and of the nation. 

Till then be this sacred and inviolate soil, 

In which they lie, who no more fight or toil. 

And here I drop the pen, that no less noble tlieme 

May engross my thoughts, or to engross them seem. 

Washington City, July, 1S6G. 

P. S. — Not far off three thousand other graves there are. 

Whose graves are they? In whose guardian care? 

They are of those call'd rebels in their life ; 

Who bravely died in the unnatural strife; 

Once our foes, in the cold grave no longer so ; 

Tears, too, for these, and generous tears might flow. 

No enmity, no rancorous feeling now have we, 

Leaving all to God, and to eternity. 

Their own cause had they, and gave for it their lives ; 

The memory of their gallantry survives. 

Mine not their creed, but courage, honor, I admire ; 

Not my faith did these early dead inspire. 

I ask not now what chances brought them here ; 

I mourn their fate, and drop an honest tear. 



58 



OLD AGE AND ITS MISEKIES. 

Senectus si digna, felix est et utilis, 

Si non digna infelix etfutilis. [Anon. 

' Day chases day, decay pursues decay. 
Still drops some joy from withering life av^ay." 

[Dr. Johnson. 



I now return your book:* its vein is good, 
And rightly read and rightly understood 
Instruction gives, and consolation too, 
To those who've pass'd life's hurly-burly through 
As I have done — an asseveration true ; 
The proof — I have seventy-four now close in view; 
'An age at which, all illusions past, 
Sober, sad reality has come at last. 

I can't agree in all the author says 
Of senile age, its beauties and its pleasant ways ; 
The reverence paid it by admiring youth. 
Who take its teaching for transcendant truth, 
And seem to think that knowledge and old age 
Are synonyms for what is good and sage. 
Not always so ; for many a hoary head 
Contains a brain obtuse, its functions dead, 
Or if alive, as dim and dull as lead. 
Old Chaucer said what may be said again : 
*' The greatest clerks ben not the wisest men ; "f 
That he who knows much may be still not good ; 
Thus this terse line is to be understood. 
But when old age is wise, and good as wise, 
And ever shows itself in virtue's guise, 
'Tis then an oracle of Defphic worth, 
And more than all the oracles on earth 



*A friend lent the author of this poem, if such it can be called, 
Tke Evening of Life, which he read, and Old Age was the result of 
the reading. 

t Chaucer's line is slightly changed, not the sense, however. 



59 

That owe to lieathen gods their origin, 
Products of fraud and enginery of sin.* 
But to be old, unteachable, untaught, 
Incapable of great and generous thought; 
Exemplary in naught but vice and sin, 
No grace without, no instincts good within ; 
Lejeu nevaut pas la chandelle,f as say 
The French, nor worth the purchase of a day; 
Than to be this, better not have been at all; 
Aiid though annihilation must appall 
All who think thereon, all who think can. 
Will say 'tis worse to be a bad old man. 
But to be high-minded, fair, generous, just. 
In whom all place unhesitating trust ; 
Well-principled and sincere, upright, good. 
Is better far than wealth or rank or blood ; 
Better than to be as wise as Solomon, 
Or greater even than the great Napoleon. J 

II. 

At best old age is burdensome and drear, 
A magazine of miseries and of care. 
The author of the book says not all he knows, 
Is rather eulogistic and verbose ; 
Says much in praise of what he has not felt, 
, And might have dealt some blows he has not dealt 
At the calamities of poor senility. 
Its helpless status and its imbecility, 
Which has no hope, that "hope which comes to all, 



• Sophocles, in one of his tragedies written twenty-three hundred 
years ago, makes Neoptolemus siiy that it is better to be just than 
wise d\X c\ StKata tcjv co(pu)v Kptiaao) ruSc. Also, that he would 
rather fail with honor than succeed without it. Noble ideas, these, 
for an old heathen 1 Is the world governed by such now? Was it 
ever? 

. t The French proverb, " Lejeit, ne vaul pas la chandelle "—the sport 
IS not worth the candle. 

^^ X TJie great Napoleon. Not Napoleon the Third, but the First— 
mon oncle." 



60 

To rich and poor, good, bad, and free and thrall. 
Spring comes to nature, but the frozen state 
Of an old man no spring will renovate. 
Downward, down his tendencj^; th' evening's close 
Finds him yet worse than when at morn he rose ; 
And rising from his sleepless, weary bed. 
Yet worse than when he gave to rest his head. 
No pleasant dreams had he, couleur de rose, 
But drear and dismal, as each ancient knows. 
Sleep is not for him repose and blessing. 
And scarcely pays the trouble of undressing. 

, His dreams are terrible beyond compare ; 

"Black bulls then toss him and black devils tear,""^ 
Mad dogs worrj'^, plagues of Egypt vex him, 
And all conspires to torment and perplex him ; 
Cramps torture him, the nightmare suffocates, 
He writhes and struggles, groans, and swears, and sweats ; 
Vain are his appeals for mercy, vain his thi-eats ! 
Bills of unpaid tailors flaunt before him, 
Of bakers, grocers, plague, harass, and bore him; 
Fiends mock, infuriate duns assail him, 
The constable is on the watch to 7iail him ; 
Boasf strive to squeeze out his vitality ; 
He wakes — thanks God 't is not reality. 
To the old fogy who can but crawl and creep 
This is " nature's sweet restorer, balmy sleep." 

" Blest be the man," said Sancho Panza, 
The famous squire of the Knight of Man^ha — 

*" Black bulls then toss Mm and blitcJc devils tear." This line is 
from Dry den's fable of the Cock and the Fox. 

-\ Boa constrictors are Qomraon in South America, but do rot reach 
the length or size given them by early Spanish authors. Calancha 
says they swallow crocodile's eggs, which cannot be digested with- 
out being first crushed. To do this the boa coils himself about a tree 
and crushes them by pressure, during which operation the report is 
like volleys of musketry. 

The viceroy of Peru, Taboada, said in 1795 that there were snakes 
about the affluents of the river Amazon 110 feet in length and 3 feet 
thick. The one that annoyed the Roman army in Africa 300 years 
B. C. was 120 feet long and very fierce. The " old dragon," slain by 
the kedcrosse Knight, according to Spenser in i\iQ Faertc (jueene, was 
a third of a mile in length—" of three furlongs'does but little laeke." 

I take these stories to be all about equally authentic. There is no 
loa in South America forty feet in length. 



61 

" Blest be the man who invented sleep, 
Which serves as well as any cloak to keep 
One snug and warm."* Well said and witty. 
But useless to the old. " 't is true, 't is pity." 
The sleep to them the most worth taking 
Is that long sleep from which there is no waking. 
No tcaJciiifj — more correct to say, but one, 
When earlh and all it bears is vanished, gone. 

III. 
Philosophers, and poets, too, have said 
Fine things of age, and were not at all afraid 
To give it a preference over youth, 
As though they spoke a quintessential truth; 
'Mong these were Avon's bard and Cicero, f 
Both great and world-renowned as we all know; 
Profoundly wise were both, and always wise. 
And deathless are their names till nature dies. 
The latter thought old age the finish-finial | 
Of all that appertains to moral life and social ; 
And writes, de jiicunda senectiite, 
As though it were a thing of peerless beauty ; 
Was pleas' d that he was old and soon would die, 
And join his Cato in eternity. || 
He thought so, doubtlessly, and yet he fled 
From his assassins when they sought his head ; 



* Sancho Panza .said that sleep "encierra d uno como %ma capa." 
Lope de Vega, the great Spanish dramatist, says: 

" Que el grande y el peqtieno 
^'o?i igualcs que duran el auerio ;" 

" In sleep the great and the humble are equal." He does not say 
the old and the young. 

t Shak.'peare was 52 years old when he'died ; Cicero 64. Too early 
a death for such men. 

+ Finish- Finial. This is a term of Gothic architecture— an orna- 
ment on the top of a pinnacle is a finish-finial. 

II Cicero says : " Leins est senectus nee solum nnn molesta sed jucunda." 
I do not find it fo. He said he would leave life as if he went out of 
an inn, and not from his own hons^—tanriHam ex hospitio, non tanquam 
ex domo. Still he was willing to remain in the inn a little longer 
when called on to leave it. And so are we all. Cicero says concern- 
ing Cato: ' Proficiacar ad Catonem meum quo nemo vir melior natm 
est," 



62 

But fled in vain. 'Twas not well done to fly, 

But well redeem'd when came the hour to die ; 

Calm and coi;rageously he met his fate ; 

And thus succumb'd the glory of the state. 

He was a heathen ; true, yet was he great, 

And, for a heathen, noble, without a trait 

Of ought ignoble, base, or bad, or low ; 

A little vain, but who might not be so 

Who could pretensions so unequal'd show? 

Above all men he was wise and eloquent. 

On patriot objects ever firmly bent. 

To save again his country, often sav'd. 

The hate of Fulvia and her I'ord* he brav'd ; 

But sad and useless was his martyrdom — 

The gods ha,d judg'd and doom'd to slavery Rome. 

The pater patrice then could only die ; 

He died, and g^ve his name to immortality. 

IV. 

Shakspeare was never old, died in his prime. 
And left the world before the normal time. 
He tells us of the " honor, love, obedience, 
Troops of friends," respect, and deference 
Due to old age. All these he had, whilst young, 
AYon by his pen's eloquence, not his tongue. 
Like a skill'd advocate he changes sides, 
Laughs at old age, and humorously derides. 
Just see how graphic his delineation 
Of an old man's piteous situation : 
" Sans teeth, sans eyes, sans taste, sans everything;" 
Which he believ'd or could not so truly sing. 
And then his " lean and slipper'd pantaloon," 
And the "shrunk shank," to be more shunk soon; 
The " treble pipe and spectacles on nose," 
Abundantly the poet's thoughts disclose — 



* Fulvia and her lord. The lord was Mark Antliony, one of the 
worst characters of the bad age in which he lived. They both finally 
came to grief, and richly deserved to come. -' 



63 

That he held old age in no great reverence, 
Though to others recommending deference. 
Nor did Chaucer much admire the senile state, 
As these two lines would seem to indicate : 
" Full longe were his loggcs and full lene, 
Y like a staffe there was no calfe y seen." 
From age and ineffectual nutrition 
Lean and calfless is my own condition ; 
But use reconciles, and I do but laugh 
At my own want of pinguitude and calf. 
Obesity is but a doubtful blessing — 
A ftict that very few decline confessing. 
And as for calf, fine animals have none. 
But man of all that live beneath the sun. 
The noble horse, the faithful dog have none, 
And yet full many a gen'rous deed they've done.* 
Fat on the leg is well, but on the brain 
For the possessor is esteem'd no gain ; 
Of that accumulation let us all beware; 
In the same category fat and fatuous are. 
As some do think and some do boldly say • 
I decide neither the one nor other way. 
Bat do opine there is no certain rule — 
The fat man may be wise, the lean a fool. 
'Tis no small consolation for the obese 
That they will rise without superfluous grease 
On the day of general resurrection, 
Improved in symmetry and in complexion. 
If this is fiction I have not made it ; 
John Wicliff, the great reformer, said it.f 



And yet full many a gen'rou!! deed thry'vedone. Horses and docs 
especially the latter The most famous dogs are those of Saint Ber- 
nard, in the Ali.s, who are trained to find persons buried in the snow 
-a duty they perform with .astonishing sagacity and success. One 
had saved forty persons, and was then pensioned. The Spaniards 
made a very, eflective use ot doss in their wars with the Indians in 
tierce-cSfed'a^ano '^"'" '"'"^''"^ ''' '''''*'''■'• ^«r« very large and 

t./oA« F,-c?,;/r, the great reformer, said it. What he said was this: 
hf. n.l ,vi tv?'!. press persons would rise at the resurrection less incuin- 
bcied with matter." Instead oi fat, I say grease. Sense the same. 



64 



V. 

"Age is unnecessary," says King Lear ' 
. To Goueril bis child, who, though near 
To him in blood, was very far remov'd 
In reverence, and yet by him belov'd. 
She was an ingrate, bold, bad, profligate, 
And met a fearful and deserved fate. 
Age is unnecessary, and so 1 somewhat think j 
And when we find ourselves upon the brink 
Of evanescence, soon to be resolv'd 
Into that dust from which we were evolv'd. 
Inept, unapt, leliiargic, frigid, slow, 
'Tis just as well to make our bow and go. 

" Ay! but to die, and go we know not where" — * 
'Tis this makes life, so worthless, seem so dear. 
It was a saying of the Greeks of old, 

I The middle-ag'd for counsel; for action bold 
The young ; the old for prayer and piety, f 
Which they might practice to satiety, 
With formulae of all variety. 
If with decorum and propriety, 
From the dark mysteries of EleusisJ down 
To creeds and worship of the least renown. 
The Eleusinian rites were high, exclusive. 
But all fantastical, all illusive. 
We know not what they really were, nor need 
To know ; which may be said of- many a creed. 



*" Ay ! hut to die, and flotce hnow not where." This line, as all 'wil! 
know, is in Measure for Measure. 

+ The Greeks had a saying, " The young for labor and action, the 
middle-aged for counsel, the old for prayer" — cpya vimv, PovXai ie 
jieawv, svx^ai ie yepovTuv, We say, the old for counsel. The Greeks 
were wiser, perhaps. 

JThe Eleusinian Mysteries lasted as a worship about eighteen 
hundred years; were abolished by the Emperor Theodosius in the 
fourth century. The worship is dead and the key to it lost, and is 
not worth finding, probably. 



05 

VI. 

OKI aj^e is honorable, as we're told. 
But ii, 16 not enough merely to be old ; 
Without virtue, to be old is a disgrace, 
And makes a serious, sad, and piteous case. 
But to be old and good, and virtue's friend, 
This is a consummation and an end 
" Devoutly to be wish'd."' WIio can aclileve 
It all. the crown of honor shall receive ; 
But if old only there is no recompense. 
And the old sinner can't too soon go hence ; 
Or let him else repent and fructify, 
Ijearn how to live, and, better, how to die ; 
If not, no occupation has he here. 
Nor fix his hopes on heaven can he dare ; 
He has no refuge and no ark of safety save 
In blank oblivion and the silent grave. 
Yet there is balm in Gilead, balm for all 
Who on Him, all pow'rfulto save, will call. 
None, then, need despair or faint ; should not, 
When grace for contrite seeking can be got, 
For when contritely sought 'tis ever given, 
And all that wish may surely get to heaven 
Through Him, beginning, center, pivot, end,* 
The Friend of all, the sinner's greatest Friend. 

A great, good bishop said lo*g time ago, 
What all should realize as well as know. 
That in settling our great and last account 
'Twill not be ask'd of us to say the amount 



* Through Him, Itcginnina, center, pivot, end. M. Fargues, a Prot- 
estant Freneh minister, says of Christ; " Je^'is Chri»t en effet est h 
centre du chrUtuniinmc, le pivot mir fer/uel route tovlea leu v&riten de la 
religion. 11 en est le commencement, le milieu, le fin. II est le chris- 
ti'iniiime complet. iibsolu incarne, personnifie vivnnt." 

M. Renan, a French savant, wrote a "Life of .Jesus." two or three 
yoars ago, which has been much read and much criticised. It is 
ultra skeptical, rejects the divinity of Christ, but bestows on Him a 
(jreat a,mount of eulogy, says lie was a " charminsr teacher," "serene- 
and mighty poul," his "relicion everlasting," sublirno person," 

incompanablo hero of the Passion," &c., Ac. Renau rejects elS, 
m'.raclcs, not ag being impossible, but as not proved. 



6G 

Of years, or months, or daj's, we've lived, but how vicll ; 

And on this question hangs or heaven or hell. 

That good man was Bishop Taylor — his name 

Baptismal, Jeremy — -well known to fame ; 

Much lov'd. His IIolj/ LicHng and his Dying 

Is an excellent book and edifying; 

To myriads it has consolation giv'n, 

Makes smooth our path on earth and points to heaven. 



VII. 



A wise, good man said, two centuries ago," 
Death comes to young men, to death old men go ; 
They go, 't is true, but go because they must, 
Not that they wish to be return' d to dust. 
The old love life as much as do the young, 
As has been often said and now is sung 
In my pretentionless and unskill'd verse, 
Which might be better and not easily worse. 
I am no poet; ne'er drank of Hippocrene ; 
Nor Mount Parnassus have I climb' d or seen ; 
Know not Apollo, nor one of all the Nine ; 
Ne'er mounted Pegasus, nor shall, as I opine — 
Such steeds are not for old men's riding. 
And those who, in their vanity confiding, 
Essay the feat ai'e tumbled in the dirt, 
Cur'd of their ambition and not much hurt. 
The horse flings them as he flung Bellerophon 
The bold, then wing'd his flight to Helicon. 



*j4 wise, good man said, tioo centuries ago. George Herbert, cele- 
brated for his learning and piety. He wrote English, Greek, and 
Latin poetry and prose. His description of war in Latin, if read by 
all statesmen and those who get ui) wars, every day, that "pious 
pastime" might be less frequent, lie says: ' Ecce lanienas omni- 
modas, truncata corpora mntilatam imaginein Dei paujcilhim vitoe. 
urbluin incendin, fragores, direptionen, ntuprntas virgines, prctgnantcn 
bis iiUersectas, effigies iino umbras hoininuiii, fame, frigore, illuvie eneo- 
tas, contusas, debilitntas." Any minister of the Gospel might read 
Herbert's Priest to the Temple with profit. 

The great Erasmus said truly of war, " BeUwn dulce irie.rpertis" — 
war is relished by those who know not what it is. 



67 

Again I say, I surely am no poet, 
And care uot if all the world should know it; 
My rhymes are halting, feeble, and ephemeral, 
Just worthy to be quick forgotten all. 
Could I build up the noble verse Miltonic, 
Or emulate the glowing strains Byronic ; 
Of Pope, Cowper, Campbell, Crabbe, Coleridge, Scott. 
Dryden, Southey, Wordsworth, Moore, and a large lot 
Besides, whom for want of room I name not, 
Although Mrs. Hemans must not be forgot ; 
And here at home many of great and growing fame. 
Many a rever'd and highly honor' d name ; 
Sigourney, Bryant, Halleck, Whittier, Drake, 
With many more that a galaxy make. 
In which galaxy I should place Janvier, 
Of sweetest singers the confest compeer. 
In it, too, is Long us Comes,* as the Times 
Of London calls that builder of grand rhymes 
Whom his compatriots Longfellow call — 
Among the first, some think the first of all. 
But mention must be made of Tennyson, 
Whose name rhymes well with the word benison. 
Judah P. Benjamin, the Confederate, f 
Asserted of the British laureate, 
(Tennyson,) that he was God's own poet, 
Which if lie is all mankind should know it. 
Such phrase as this is hyperbolical, 
And little nrerited or not at all ; 
It seems to be tant soit pen irreverent, 
And from Judah toto ccelo I dissent. 
If what he said in this behalf he meant. 



The London Time^, m a poetical and satirical critique of Ilin- 
<P-i/Aa latiiiizos Longfellow's name witli tlio words Lonons Oumrn 
ana asks wholtun-t.he poem is f»»ihoi- hitukum. Bosh is East Indian 
(or mtnieme. What 6«rt/c«ni (Buncombe) means everybody knows. 

tJudah P. Benjamin, the Confederate, said of Tennyson, in a 
^:peechln the Senate in IS'iS: "God created that man a poet. ]Ti« 
inspiration is his— hissongs arc his by divinerigl»t." This is Mr E "s 
opiuiOQ, notiuiue. 



68 

God leaves the bard to his own inspiration, 

To make or mar his bardic reputation ; 

Which, if he maljes, 't is his ; if not, then he 

la but a poet damn'd/eZo dese. 

I add the peasant bard, the Scottish plowman.'^ 

Of whom for pregnant wit and pathos no man 

Can be pronounced the superior, 

Whilst legion is the name of the inferior: — 

Could I like these construct the glorious rhyme, 

My name might then survive to after time ; 

They all are denizens of Mount Parnassus, 

Where many a pauper but ne'er an ass is ; 

But cuibono'? These great names all must die ; 

On earth can be no immortality, 

To none will that KTijiia cU an f be giv'n 

But those whose names are register' d in heaven. 

I can't leave out the admirable Gray, 

And for a rhyme I name the ingenious Gay. 

The Elegy is worth ten tomes of trash 

Like mine, or any poetaster's mish-mash: 

This for Gray ; and all the reading Britons say 

No ^bles read equal are to those of Gay ; 

Whilst all the French adhere to Lafontaine, 

Who wrote 7iis Fables in Louis Fourteenth's reign ; 

And they for grace and beauty, ease and wit. 

To none are second that were ever writ. 

VIIL 

For what is an old man fit ? For the "big wars ?" 
The least of all. Minerva and stern Mars 
Eschew him both. No place has he in life ; 
No children it may be, nor friends, nor wife ; 



* Thr peasant hard, the Scottish plowman. Robert Burns, of course. 
He is one of Carlyle's heroicmen. Edward Irving generously delends 
him against Dr. Chalmers and others. He says : "The Cottar's Satur- 
day Niohf redeemed half his frailties and made the cause of religion 
his debtor; a debt which it seems tome the religious have little 
thought of in their persecution of his nameandcruel exposure of all 
his faults." 

t Kri)/iia £if ajc, a possession forever. 



GO 

And thus he scrambles and he flounders on, 
Till all tlie blandishments of life are gone — 
Goes hapless, helpless, hopeless to the tomb, 
There to await the final day of doom. 
What there his status none can surely know ; 
Some say "t is thus, and others say 't is so. 
Two tiieories there are, but which is true 
I know not, nor yet do kind reader you. 
The soul, goes it at once to Paradise, 
Or goes it othergatea and otherwise?* 
Or does it wait quiescent with its clay 
To be resuscitated at that day. 
That awful day, dies irre, dies illaf 
When eartli shall be but scoria and favilla. 
We cannot know, for none returns to tell 
If he's a saint in heaven or fiend in hell. 

Here should I close my twaddle and ray rhyme, 
Which to write or read is but a waste of time ; 
But we all waste in this or in that way- 
Much have I wasted with remorse I say. 
My evening's past, and now the gloomy night 
Is on me, bringing no prospects blest or bright; 
Yet hope I will, and strive to do my best, 



* JTie Soul, (inr.s it at once to Paradise, 
Or goes it othergntes and otherivise ? 

The edcbrated Edward Irving says: "An initiatory judgment [at 
death) has us in its hold; a first paradise or a first hell instantly 
ensucth. The soul remains in a kind of trance of misery or ecstacy 
till the resurrection morn." 

But where was or where is hell, which Dante calls the vnlle Iniia, 
<-itln ;-oOT7i((— (he red vW-^—trrm nronno/ata, Ac? He savs he saw over 
it gate tliis inscription: '• Voi ch'fuinile rjui lasciate og'iii sperenza"— 
vdu that enter here leave all hope behind. 

Thegreat and good Jeremy Taylor says: "Neither does hell nor 
.states in hell infer all those torments which school men signify liy a 
riana nennwi. Neither they nor we nor any man else can tell whether 
hell IS a place or no." 

Burns calls the red city the /o?rt)i lieugh, (the flaming pit,) where 
the retreshment was "brimstone drink red reeking hef." 

'li'-\^'^'^^^^' believed in the ixtna scnmiK and in material fire. 

\\ ichff placed hell at the center of the earth, without light or 
comfort. About this no one knows anything. 

t DicnircE die.'' i//a—thc first line of a famous Latin poem written 
lonr or hve hundiid years ago. 



70 

And then to God's great mercy leave the rest. 
"To be resign'd when ills betide," I trust 
May help me on ; it should, it will, it must. 
All that God commands and does is rightly done,''^' 
A poet says, which I believe, for one. 
And with faith firmly fix'd in this belief 
I humbly trust I may not come to grief f 

I now close my song and peroration 
With a brief and pertinent quotation — 
Four lines from Pope, worth well a thousand fold 
Their weight in diamonds or refined gold ; 
Which, if consider'd with meet jjonderation. 
Will soothe and tranquillize all perturbation 
Of the soul; give peace without and peace within 
To men of sorrow and to men of sin ; 
Read, then, read again, pray, reflect, digest. 
Leaving to God's large mercy all the rest. 

FROM POPE. 

" Hope humbly then ; with trembling pinions soar. 
Wait the great teacher Death, and God adore ; 
What future bliss He gives not thee to know. 
But gives that hope to be thy blessing now. "J 

Washington City, September, 1866. 



* AU that God commands and does is rightly done. From Burgher, 
in his Lenore, the best ghost story ever written. " Was Gott thuf, da-t 
ist wohl gethan!" 

t Come to grief. This phrase has come to be ludicrous by the ludi- 
crous use constantly made of it. The prophet Isaiah says " pttt lo 
grief" in a very solemn passage. 

t The four lines from Pope are to be found in the Essaii on Man — 
a poem much read, much praised, and much criticised. The critics 
have not yet settled the controversy about the poet's object in writing 
it. It is probable that he only aimed at making a tine poem, with- 
out any theological or sectarian bias whatever. 8ome discovered 
skepticism in it, a thing that the poet certainly never thought of 
putting in it, for ho lived all his life a Roman Catholic, and died 
one, and there was no reason to doubt his sincerity. That he was 
used by Bolingbroke, as some alleged, as an instrument for giving to 
the world his own deistical views, is very improbable. He was not 
a man to be used — was more likely to use others. Dr. Johnson says 
that many regarded the Essay as a " manual of piety," and there are 
undoubtedly in it many things that the most pious will accept, and 
but few that any one would reject. AV^hat better than to hope hum- 
bly, not to attempt any ambitious spiritual soarings, to wait death 
resignedly, and to adore God devoutly ? 



n 



THE LIGHT BRIGADE. 

The Charge of the Light Brigade 

Is the name of Tennyson's song; 
Not by far the best that he has made, 

But has this merit: 'tis not very long. 
'Tis about the fate of the gallant Six Hundred, 
The viciims of some one who blunder'd. 
"Cannon to the right of them, 
Cannon to the left of them. 
Cannon in front of them. 
Volley' d and thunder' d ; 
Storm' d at with shot and shell, 
In^o the jaws of death, 
Into the mouth of hell, 
Rode the Six Hundred." 



"Then they rode back, but 
Not the Six Hundred." 
In six hundred rode three hundred out, 
Escaping from the carnage, in full rout. 
And the wonder is that not so many 
Escap'd, but that escap'd ten, or any. 
Six hundred 'gainst thirty thousand were the odds: 
Had Mars and all the warf ior gods 
Been on the side of the troops assailant, 
Whose conduct was heroical and gallant. 
They must have fail'd, in spite of valor and of vaunt; 
But such a blundering proceeding 
As led to the slaughter and stampeding 
Was very gallant, as said St. Arnaud, 
Who was looking at the rout and row ; 
" But war," he added, " it is surely not," 
Of the science all rules were then forgot, 
And British daring a signal lesson got. 
Valor they had, but no appliance 
Of strategy; their sabers their reliance 



72 

These they handled well, or none had come back 

To tell the upshot of the wild attack. 
" Some one blunder'd," says Tennyson : 

Well knew he who was that one — 

Lord Raglan, the brave commander-in-chief — 

But would not put the brave old man to grief. 

He was a well- tried Waterloo hero. 

Which gave him the Crimean command, all know. 
There was one, first among the fighting men, 

A private, whose name was John Penn. 

First in the fight to plunge, and the last out, 

He saw and took great part in the red rout ; 

Resolved to do, to conquer, or to die, 
" Strike for Queen and country" was the cry. 

And whilst the Russian caunon thunder'd, 

Though well he knew some one had blunder' d, 

He made his saber glisten in the air, 

Light' ning like, in front, right, left, and in the roar. 

He got off, not to be said victorious. 

But grim, gory, stern, and glorious. 

He for his heroism had this notable reward, 

Which all British journals did record : 

The Queen's thanks, and twenty stealing pound I 

Where for this can any counterpart be found? 

Thus England rewards her valiant common men, 

Among the most valiant the said John Penn. 



JUSTUM ET TENACEM. 

Imitation of Horace. 

The man to virtue dedicate. 
In every circumstance and state, 
Erect is always and elate, 
Whate'er his fortune or his fate. 



IS 

Tiie mob, the clamors p;>piilar, 
And tactics dark of party war 
Appal him not, perplex, nor scare, 
And offer to his course no l)ar. 

The tyrant's menace, or liis frown 
Disturbs not, or can cast him down ; 
f lis purposes are all his own, 
Dependent not on king or crown. 

The ocean's billows rage juid roll, 
They cannot move his stonier soul ; 
Nor Jove's red bolt that shakes the pole 
Can turn him from his dcstiu'd goal. 

States may rise and States may fall, 
And ruin seize all things terrestrial ; 
Serenely he contemplates all. 
Nor pales should the bhie concave fall. 

He fears nought, his conseience clear — 
Nor Jove who rules the upper sphere, 
Nor lesser gods who rule down here 
Can bright hope inspire or pale fear. 



CHIMBORAZO. 

All have not seen the mountain Cliimborazo, 
Near the road as you journey on to Quito, 
Visible at the distance of some forty leagues. 
Though to get there takes days of hard fatigues 
And innumerable, for you must climb and climb, 
Until you begin to think the road and time 
Two weary and disheart'ning things ; 
And so they are, as bade my mt^ui'ry brings. 

In the year eighteen hundriid thirty-eight 
Tiie journey I accomplish'd at a slow rate | 
For you are ever mounting and descending, 



•74 

And with many obstacles contending : 

Bad roads, high waters, mud, and steepnesses, 

Precipices, stubborn mules, and stubborn asses ; 

Stubborn drivers, too, peons call'd in that country, 

Who go when they please, cheat or leave ye. 

But the journey when once undertaken 

Must be made, for none confess their courage shaken. 

So you set off, trusting much to Providence — 

Best not to give your peons the least oiFense, 

For you are in their pow'r and their keeping, 

Riding, walking, eating, waking, sleeping. 

They are not bad, will not kill or harm you. 

But will annoy, and now and then alarm you. 

But go ahead ! Too late now for recoiling ; 

And so you get on, growling, scolding, toiling. 

And at last you come to the fam'd mountain. 

Whence comes many, many a snow cold fountain. 

The road — rather, a mere horse and mule way — 

Passes fifteen thousand feet above the sea, they say ; 

No small height, and this may perhaps be true : 

I did not verify, but give it as I got to you. 

Roads macadamiz'd or smooth there are none. 

And none will be whilst blows the wind and shines the 

sun. 
'Mong these heights the iron horse will never snort; 
Many convincing reasons are there for 't ; 
Too many to be now recapitulated, 
And by me not ever to be stated. 
'Tis cold, icy, dreary, and most dismal. 
With the huge mountain closely vicinal, 
Which seems to lift to heav'n its awful dome, 
Reminding of St. Peter's church at Rome — 
That is, as regards configuration ; 
For between them is no commensuration. 
The mountain stands solitary and alone. 
An inaccessible and awe-inspiring cone. 
Whose apex, if 'tis ever scal'd by venturous man. 
The bold man who scales it thence may scan 
A tract of waste, of mountain, and of i^lain 



75 

Of two liiindrerl miles across, or as much tigaiii. 

You enter next upon a sort of fable Inml, 

In which a dozen snowy mountains stand, 

Three or four of which may be volcanic; 

The rest not so, but awful and titanic. 

Cotopaxi is a volcano of much fame, 

Of which every one I'm sure has heard the name; 

Pichiucha also is, and now and tli'en each one 

Will bellow in car-vexing and world-waking tone. 

In '38 tliey were not in activity ; 

Were reposing in dull passivity, 

Silent and quiescent; but the fires within 

May be lighted up at any time again. 

Volcanos are not extinct till it is clear 

They are burnt out, and no mr)ro cause for fear. 

Quito reach'd at last, the first thing was rest, 

Much needed after being with fatigue oppress'd. 

This was the Incas ancient capital 

Five centuries ago, and tliar, may not be all: 

Spanish has been ever since the Inca's fall. 

Indians there are yet of the old Quichua race, 

But of their old and palmy days no trace. 

Poor, down-trodden creatures are they now, 

No manhood in their looks, no daring on their brow. 

Nothing is left them now, ground as they are to dust : 

Slaves are they, and know and feel and see they must 

To their Spanish lord's behest submit 

However they may champ and curse the bit. 

So the great empire of the Incas pass'd away, 

As will pass the proudest empires of the day. 

The Austrian crumbles, and the Mexican 

Goes down, when off goes Maximilian. 

Let him go, and quick. I vote for that for one. 

Because he made himself the tool of Napoleon. 

Though with some good points and honorable he be 

He deserves no pity, and no sympathy. 

xV fool's ambition brought him into trouble. 

And for a crown, that poor paltry bauble, 

He put his life, his fame, all in jeopardy, 



76 ■ 

And has no chance now but quick to fly. 
I hope he'll get off with a wiiole skin, 
But shall not should he try to come again. 
He that can be made a tool by Louis Nap. 
Deserves well to be caught in a steel trap. 

What empire now can hope to flourish long, 
When Home lives but in story and in song? 
The Rome I mean of Ctesar, Cato, Cicero, 
And not tlie liome of the Pope Pio Nono ; 
Wliich is but a paltry shadow of the old, 
Where the weapons are no longer steel, but gold. 
God blet-;s old Pio! he's as good a man 
As those who will detlinme him when they can ; 
Ej(."Ct, exi)el, make him a wanderer, 
And to lay his head have no phico where ; 
This is all for unificMzioiu. 
As King Victor and his adherents say, 
"Italia one and indivisible" must l)e; 
But that can't be whilst at Rome's, the Holy See. 
I object not to Italian iin'dy, 
But the old Pope's right.-; should respected be; 
Not depose, dishonor, and exile him, 
Nov insult and libel and revile him. 
They should not oust him — let him die in. peace; 
He is near fourscore, and of life short his lease. 
I'm not a Roman Catholic, but still 
I say, let time, not grief, the old man kill. 

I must not forget the condor, that great bird 
Of which have been told many things absurd. 
Large and strong he is, but not raptorial, 
Ts monarch of all birds equatorial. 
All his ideas tend towards gormandizing. 
No small amount of food for him sufficing. 
Ho has no sharp, strong, and trenchant talons 
Like eagles, hawks, and such like felons. 
When condors want mutton, or want lamb or veal, 
They contrive quick a sheep or calf to kill. 
With blows of beak and wings, both powerful, 
Their, victim's lease of life they soon annul. 



But they arc not nice, feed on wlint ihoy got 
■ By looking f'oi" 't, or casually i.s met. 
The condor is u huge vulture, nor more nor loss; 
Looks grand tliei'e in the dreary vviUleriiess, 
And like unfeather'd human potentate;; 
Appears to most advantage in \s own States. 

NoTK— Ullo.T, who crossed Chimborazo in 1730 on his wiiy to 
Quito, to measure, with others, a decree of the meridian, and to Ji.v 
tlic equator, (mils it iiionUnKt niolentoha, a I'atijruing mountain. 1 sii.v 
the .siime ot it. The tine, 'aa determined hy Ulloa, Coiidamine, ami 
others, is eleven miles north et Quito. Humboldt say.s tliat the con- 
dor goes to the I'aeitic coast in search of food, returnins: the same 
day — a flight of four hundred miles. He says, also, lliat there is 
about Quito a volcanic region of .seven hundred square leagues. 
What a vast quantity of subterranean fire tlicro must bel 



ECONOMY. 

Maortvrn vcctigal cat parsinwnia. [Cicero. 

" Economy's a very useful brooin. 
But should not ceaseless hunt about the room 

To make of every pin a 2>lum ; 
Sometimes it is an iron vise, 
^yhich squeezes the little Kuts of mice , 

That peep with fearful eyes and .isk a crumb." 

These are Peter Pindar's line.'; — Doctor Wolcott; 

A poet, wit, satirist, and what not 

Who wrote in London eighty years ago — 

Once his poetry was all the rage and go. 

And his works are amusing and poetical. 

As satirist he had not any equal ; 

Now not much read, in great degree neglected, 

Though by all rhyme readers once respected 

For energy, felicity, and boundless wit. 

Oh, Peter, that these times should so little value it 

We go for jiolitics, for fashion, stocks, and gold. 

And all that can be bought or can be sold ; 

Wit is at discount and left out in the cold : 

He who on his wit depends for bread may die 

Li rags and wretchedness, in stall or sty. 



IS 

Be warn'd, young tuau ! If you possess that gift 

Fling it away and sweep the streets or cinders sift, 

Or it will at the poor-house land you swift; 

Or i( not Jling, be of it a non-user, 

And never either a user or abuser. 

Wisdom less shudders at a fool than wit," 

Said Dr. Young, and he well knew what he writ. 

Now I will discourse about economy — 
An excellent tliinu:, as all at once agree, 
Much more prais'd than practiced 't is, 
And few are they who are not at all remiss. 
'Tis hard to practice I at once admit ; 
But it is'"possible to practice it. 
The word is often and often daily us"d ; 
Yet as to what it is our ideas are confus'd. 
What is economy, as some suppose. 
Others might think niggard or profuse ; 
Each has his ideas and his rule. 
As he is of this or of another school. 
-To live always within your means, some say 
Will do— some, lay up for a rainy day ; 
And as a rule these last are nearest right. . 

Though bright the day, yet may come a gloomy night; 
Misfortunes remediless, and losses, 
Ten thousand cares, ten thousand crosses 
May supervene to plague, harass, and vex, 
Wear out your patience, and your soul perplex. 
The rainy day with storms and floods has come; 
Then be comfortable in your own paid-for home, 
And work and save, lay up, economize ; 
Then no "wife's upbraidings, no childrens cries 
For bread — of all cries the most heartrending — • 
Ol't beginning, and not often ending. 
Ugolino, when starving in his prison. 
Was crush'd by his sons' suff'rings, not his own. 
They all died, the wretched father last ; 
He saw them go, then his soul indignant pass'd. 
Look in Dante for this frightful story ; 
You'll find it in his IIcU or Ihirgatory. 



'79 

8ome speiii] all ihoy get however largo the store — 

With tliCKC the wolf is always at the door : 

May not enter in, but gives uneasiness, 

Lest some hour, some day, he may find ingress. 

One economic rule I will briefly mention, 

And one deserving of continual attention. 

Are your means small? Then buy no useless thing ; 

Such purchases will inconvenience bring. 

And then again, what you can't too often hear, 

A useless thing at any price at all is dear. 

This Poor Richard said a hundred years ago, 

AVhom we by the greater name of Franklin know ; 

He who brought by science fire from heaven,^ 

And to whom and others was the great mission given 

To wrest the scepter from a tyrant's hand 

And give freedom to t^iis great and prosperous land. 

Industry and economy make a great nation ; 
Without them there is no strength, no elevation. 
Then let us work and save, and live and thrive. 
And slww that we are kicking and alive; 
And this without resorting to the iron vise 
,That squeezes out the little souls of mice. 

But as I'm saying nothing you don't know 
I drop the jien, and leave the mattar so. 



THE NE\y PURCHASE. 

Of Russia we have bought much soil near the pole; 
Not a great purchase some think upon the whole. 
We get too much ice and circumpolar land, 
Mountains high, cliffs steep, pine trees, Indians, sand. 
Our friend the Czar knows how to make a bargain. 
And all he gets to him is clean, clear gain. 
What we bought, to him was an incumbrance. 



* Kripnif fvlmen c coclo, ncfyArumqwi ti/ra^nis. 



80 

Ar.d soon he sold whene'er turn'd up the chance. 

• ... 

1 d(>n't ol)ject, but seven million is a round price 

To pay for all this circumpolar land .and ice. 

Seven ! Some yet sti}- ton ; when shall we know? 

Three millions make a round sum as times go. 

But be which it may, ii'importe, we have gold 

Enough, and greenbacks to buy all to be sold. 

I would pay high to gratify the Czar, 

Our good friend in peace, and so to be in wai', 

1 hope, should war from Europe ever come. 

Forbid it, Heav'n ! But still there may be some 

"Who would be well pleas'd to see & fracas — ■ 

Willing to see a war with England. The claw 

Of our great Eagle, they think, for the lion's paw 

A match. It may be, and if war, I hope so ; 

But pea^e I want, and no war breeze to blow, 

No dreadful, black, destructive, dire tornado ; 

And England is not a despicable foe. 

She feels secure in her fast-anchor'd isle ; 

Sings yet about her home is on the deep, 

Needs no bulwark strong along the steep ; 

, About her flag that fears not battle or the breeze, 

And that she rules all the blue vasty seas. 

A braggart she — I believe all nations are ; 

They brag in peace, thej' brag still more in war. 

At war with England, her insolent pretension 

We would knock into the fifth, the last declension ; 

Into the begging ease, the vocative, 

And make her peace most willing to receive 

From us on terms we shall ourselves dictate ; 

And if she will not love us, then let her hate. 

But our purchase — what got we but ice ana snow? 

First, fifry thousand five-feet Esquimaux, 

Pine forests, mountains, rocks, and solitudes. 

And wild animals in great multitudes ; 

Valuable, some for fur and all for pelt, 

In regions where things frozen seldom molt; 

Fish of all kinds, and, can we catch them, whales, 

Much money worth when whalers make good sales. 



81 

But with our Esquimaux what shall we do? 

We have of Chinamen and Indians not a few, 

More than useful are or ornamental ; 

But as Heaven has sent them let's take all. 

Our new friends are not bad men by nature, 

But being only five feet are low of stature. 

Would they were taller! but miscegenation 

May in time give them greater elevation. 

We must give them pensions and annuities. 

And what they to wish or ask for, please. 

Our favors, they will not I am sure refuse ; 

Will tRank us for them, and may not abuse. 

f hope the best, and let them have free suffrage. 

That great boon being now the fashion and the rage. 

They are capable of being made good Christians: 

Our other wild Indians being all Philistines. 

We get also, says the tourist, Mr. Roche, 

Coal, gold, and diamonds. Some think this all bosh. 

Coal' may be there — and 'tis the true diamond — 

Tliough as yet by poets little rhym'd on. 

The nation whose coal mines shall 1-ast longest 

Will give the law, for such vv'ill be the strongest. 

Coal will be the king for years ten hundred, 

Unless our geologists have sadly blunder' d. 

Look out, then, Briton, Prussian, Aiistrian, Gaul, 

Or your pretensions we shall heav'ly maul ; 

Teach you what is comity international. 

And make you knov/ and keep the law, one and all. 

What next? I think we want, but not with war, 
The British territory, now intercalar, 
Between us and our lov'd and loving Esquimaux ; 
'Tis of no value to the British ; this they know. 
We need it. Britain will sell, I have no doubt,. 
Before the present century is out. 
I would pay willingly, would pay well, 
To get her off, whenever she will s.ell. 
But no fighting ; none. Of that we've had enough. 
And knerw 'tis a business bad, bloody, rough. 

6 



82 

'Tis the Avaste of life, the mis'i-y find the blood 
• I hate, of which comes seldom any good. 

With the British lands we may breathe a while, 
And not by war or purchase seek more soil ; 
But finally our boundary will be Panama, 
Which seems so distant now and far aica\ 
We must then make a canal from sea to sea,* 
A thing feasible, and of utility ; 
I know, I've seen, been on the ground, inquired. 
And I say it may be done if e'er requir'd. 
Costly it will be — cosf forty millions ; 
But lasting ever if but well made once. 4 

'Twill be through our own territory, and we 
May then command' the trade on every sea ; 
May give the law to Europe and all others. 
Unless they act tow'rd us like friends and brother?. 
Then shall our glorious, conquering eagle's flight 
Be truly and without figure out of sight ; 
Then shall his wings be seen in every sky, 
And in his beak. Union, Fraternity. 

Note. — Since the above was written Senator Sumner's speech in 
the Senate on the purchase of Russian America has been published. 
It contains much valuable information, and in a more condensed 
form than is to be found elsewhere. If the authorities he quotes are 
reliable, then the territory is worth the price, $7,200,000. The Sena- 
tor mentions the entente cordiule — a pretty phrase without much 
meaning — existing between the United State* and the Czar, which 
he says is a "phenomenon of history." The phenomenon is, I think, 
easily explained. The two countries are far apart, have no conflict- 
ing interests, and there are no religious, political, or commercial 
causes for friction or for hostility. Few Russians emigrate to the 
United States, and few Americans to Russia, or none. "Distanc e 
lends enchantment to the view." Nations far apart seldom quarrel : 
those conterminous, or near each other, are always quarreling, as 
England and Scotland before the wjiion, and France and England for 
the last six hundred years. We are never upon very good terms 
with the Canadians, and history tells what has happened between us 
and our nearest southern neighbor, Mexico. 

There is, or was, an entente cordiule between England and France 
commencing with Louis Philippe, and yet mentioned now and then. 
But the truth is that there is no people that so much dislike the 



* A sliip-canal, of course, and for the largest ships. The cost will 
•ise from forty to fifty millions. *It ought to be international and 
aeatralized ; and it is to be hoped that when it is made, fifty or sixty 
years hence, the world will be sufficiently civilized to adopt the idea 
•■md priaciple. 



83 



Engrhsh as the French; no country from which England fears an 
nva.,ou exeopttrom France; and no sovereign in whom sho hast" 
little eonhdonee as in the Emperor of the French The Ei "lUh 1. ,5?. 
not lorwtten.that lie said sonie.vcar.s ago tluithe •cprebciUed a ,,rind^ 
pie and a deteat: hcpnnciple is the empire; the dS V itcr"oo 
Inere is nothing that English statesmen better kno v tl an thatlouN- 
Napoleon will invade England whenever he thinks he e „ Uli sue- 
^ofA.'^'iM """' "'•"■■'^ V>""^''t it practicable. The Duke of -el ng- 
.?,Vl ''""'"; *"■'• ;^"^.^^'t^} ^ view to that contingency, and to no 
mamenT^'Brfti 'h'^t?t?" ''''" '""'^'"^^ "eld gnns added to the land 
nhiKhink ot-Vf hv?H^ ^';?^'^ ^''■'="«h invasion in their 



ADVERSITY. 

"Sweet are the uses of adversity. 
Which like the toad, ugly and venomous. 
Wears yet a precious jewel in its head." 

I need not say I'm sure that these lines three 

Are Shakspeare's— who could have written them save he? 

I say though the sweetness of adversity 

Is what few that have tried it could feel or see, 

Nine out of ten would think it of no use ; 

But they might be blind, ignorant, and obtuse. 

Few seek though or do court adversity ; 

Not at all believing in its efficacy. 

The toad may ugly and repulsive be ; 

So seem to us, but is he surely so pei' sef 

Does nature make things ugly ? Variety 

She aims at, therefore toads are and must bej 

They are part and portion of th' universal plan 

As we are, but inferior far to man. 

Voltaire said the toad, too, has his to Jcalon, 

His beau ideal, a beauty that he doats upon. 

Miss Toad in Mister Toad's admiring eyes 

Charms more than could an angel from the skies. 

A German savant thinks his face is somewhat human ; 

A notion that will be adopted but by few men ; 



.84 

Says men and toads alone have that ornament, 
A calf; which is to both a compliment. 
All animals have calves that calves do need ; 
The horse has none, and all will say the steed 
Is, if there is one, a fine ^nd noble animal ; 
So the lion, stag, ox, the dog, and all. 

Toads are not venomous, no more than flies ; 
The venom in our imaginations lies. 
It is an old idea, and is not yet extinct; 
On this point long has human reason blink' d. 

Nor does the toad wear in his head a jewel; 
A fact one would think Shakspeare knew well, 
But did not, or conform" d he to vulgar errors 
To draw fine pictures of beauty and of terrors? 
We know not, can not know, 'tis not essential. 
His words are still charming and potential. 
No matter what he sings of, fact or fable. 
His verse is always noble, grand, incomparable. 

Shakspeare never knew adversity ; 
His lot was one of golden mediocrity 
At Avon ; and when he went to London 
It was a prosperous, happy, enviable one. 
I do not believe that tale traditional 
•Of his deer steeling; it was apocryphal 
Long ago, and I regard it as a lie alK 
But lioolc'd he or not the venison, immortal 
Is his name ; and with Homer, and with Virgil, 
Tasso, Milton, he's on Parnassus' hill. 
According to the old notions of the heathen ; 
I wish them better, and hope they are all in heaven. 

I observe that those who praise adversity, 
And better think it than prosperity. 
Do not wish themselves the thing to see, 
But think it might to others useful be. 
Seneca, worth two millions, prais'd poverty. 
And so it is, it was, and will ever be : 
The golden mean is best for all, for you and me. 



85 



KRUMOPSIS: THE COLD WEATHER. 

I who made rhymes on heat not long ago, 
The tables turn'd, now rhyme of ice and snow, 
And boreal winds that freeze us as they blow. 
0, 'tis cold! one hundred thousand people say 
Here ten times every night and every day ; 
In this I most conscientiously concur. 
Now wrapp'd are all the ladies in warm fur 
Of every sort, from every land and region, 
And they may be well class' d as legion. 
The fur that warms a monarch warm'd a bear," 
Says Pope ; but a peg above bear fur we are. 
That we leave to those who fancy bruin ; 
Which list, I think, there are but few in. 
Here sable, ermine, marten, all Siberian fur, 
And the fine western furs they do prefer. 
Wrapp'd up in them.our dames and belles defy 
The pitiless peltings of th' inclement sky. 
Ijet"all come ; frost or ice or driving snow, 
And like ^olus when he's angry, blow ; 
Out sally they, defying all the cold can do. 
And out they'd go if hurricanes it blew. 
The summer past — they found it rather hot — 
Those roasting times they may, I've not forgot; 
And now in all their glory go they abroad. 
In every street and avenue and road. 
Saloons and fashionable resorts adorning, 
From frosty eve until the frosty morning. 
Graceful, glorious ornaments are they 
When seen at night by gas, or by bright day ; 
Their noses are at times a little blue, 
But all are so that face a cold wind, too. 
Night comes again ; 'tis gayer than the day; 
Now to the play and ball they take their way, 
And sing and dance and talk the hours away. 
Just now we have a new diversion ; 
One, too, with no danger of submersion. 



' 86 

This is an ice pond and a skating park ; 
And there they skate by day, and when 'tis dark 
The small depth of water makes it safe and sure ; 
A sousing one might get, but get no more. 
No drowning as at London a few days ago. 
When one hundred persons suddenly broke through 
And forty irremediably were drown'd, 
And but few resuscitated even were they found. 
A sad disaster that — 'twas on the Serpentine ; 
For skating famous, and the sport was fine. 
Be ready, ye ! Ye know not what an hour may bring 
On land, or ice, or floor, or anything. 
No thought have I of much moralizing, 
But there can be no harm in thus advising. 
Of- those forty none thought at the time of less 
Than length of days, and untold happiness. 
Three minutes pass'd life with them was ever o'er, 
The^places knowing them will know no more. 
Here doubtless there is much hilarity. 
And one might think, perhaps, a lack of charity. 
Not so; there is much suffering and much giv'n, 
And whilst intent on earth tliey think of heaven. 
There are here to.o many of the very poor 
With whom the wolf is ever at the door. 
They suffer much, and are much befriended, 
And their state, though never good, much mended 
By those who the suffering poor remember 
From January till the next December. 
Observe that sylph-like creature, so gay, so sweet, 
Without condiment one might her eat ; 
Wrapp'd in furs and velvet she moves as airy 
As if from fairy land and queen of Faerie, 
Or some graceful nymph just from another sphere, 
Arriv'd to study us dull mortals here. 
She may be on mercy's errand govng — 
Regardless of the ice and wind, and snowing. 
Some suffering poor to visit and relieve. 
And help at once, and consolation give. 
Then is she angelic, heaven's own minister, 



• 87 

To soothe the mind she goes, to dry the tear. 
•'Woman of heaven is all of earth wo view, 

And all but adoration is their due." 

So sang that honest man and patriot staunch, . 

Author of that much-read work, The Olive Branch — 

Matthew Carey, a good and valued citizen, 

Much in his time esteem'd 'mong men. 
'*0 woman! in our hours of ease, 

Inconstant, coy, and hard to please. 

And variable as the shade 

By the light quiv'ring aspen made; 

When pain and anguish wring the brow, 

A ministering angel thou!" 

These six lines are Walter Scott's, as know all; 

All true, and splendidly poetical. 

Cold blows the wind o'er snow eight inches deep: 

The world wags on, some laugh and others weep : 

But prevalent is fun and jocularity, 

j\.nd all the world devoted to hilarity. 

Votaries of fun, and those who have leisure, 

Mind not the cold, they mind their pleasure. 

'Tis cold enough but not like that that Tacitus 

Records as truth, and so it comes to us : 

A soldier bore some faggots, then down dropp'd, 

And v/ith them dropp'd his hands as though lopp'd.* 

'Tis somewhat difficult this to believe ; 

The author heard it, and did not deceive. 

I give below the great historian's Latin 

For those to read who are that language pat in. 
I close here leaving much unsung, unsaid, 

That I had methodiz'd within my head. 

My numbers now no further will I pour. 

For fear of beins; call'd a twaddling bore. 



* The words of Tacitus .T.re these: " Annoiafusque milot qui fascem 
liutwnim aevtiibiit, ita prrrrlfiuiHHe inanus ut oneri adhcBrentes trunciiv 
lirar.hiis deeiderent." — Lib. 13, Cop. 35. 



88 



HEALTH. 

Mens Sana in corpore aano. 
'Pauci veniunt ad senectuteni, quod ni ita accideret melius e( pnedm- 
tius viveretur." [Cieero, 

Of all the gifts on man bestow'd by Heaven 

Sound health, I think, the best of all that's giv'n. 

Without that, no other gives enjo3'ment ; 

No wealth or rank or genial employment ; 

'Tis the sheet-anchor of all happiness, 

And it's vfhole value 'tis not easy to express. 

And what seems almost incredible to be, 

We treat it as a thing of small validity ; 

Not to be put with any pleasure in comparison, 

And jeopard it for things, when o'er and done, 

We must with shame and grief look back upon. 

Mens Sana in corpore. sano all quote ; 

All have this fine aphorism well by rote; 

But how few observe the things essential, 

Health to preserve sound and potential — 

How few who commit no manner of excesses 

In public, or else in close recesses I 

Lives there a man who never by one single act 

The just rules for guarding health did not infract? 

There may be a few, a wise and prudent few, 

Who to their health and souls were always true, . 

How is a boon so desirable to be kept? 

Kept in a condition normal and correct? 

[t may be done by observing a few rules 

That may be learn'd,but not learn'd in the schools -. 

Prudent ever we must be in all we eat, 

In all we drink, wear, in every act and feat ; 

No social indulgences, no violation 

Of anything of God's gracious ordination. 

In eating, the rule of not too much is one^ 

That should be invariably practiced on. 

This was the rule to Adam by Michael giv'n, 

When, by God's command, he came down from hcav'n 

To expel the fall'n culprit from his Paradise, 



89 

Oil which he ne'er again could fix his eyes. 

Gormandizing slays myriads, is a sin " 

As much as constantly taking liqnor in. 

The effects are not as plain as of dninl>enness, 

Yet it undermines and kills but few loss. 

Abjure and shun all this, or else short lease 

Of life expect, and premature decease. 

This is avoidable, should avoided be ; 

Live to nature, and not too fast or free. 

Then length of days, then honor, wealth 

May be yours, and, better still, continued health. 

Read and study good books and relevant; 

Books of the right kind are neither scarce nor scant. 

Begin with old Cornaro, who liv'd a century 

By abstemiousness, prudence, and activity. 

Read that fine poet. Doctor Armstrong, John 

His name, the best that has this theme written on— 

Health didactically,* and 'tis a precious one. 

Read Shakspeare ; how old Adam liv'd to be 

Years eighty old, retaining health and agility. 

He did not apply rebellious liquors to his blood 

That pure and tranquil so equably flowed. 

Old Cato Censor warm'd his clay with wine,f 

But for it not the better, I opine. 

He liv'd to eighty, might have liv'd till he was tir'd. 

Had his potations his blood not fir'd. 

Eat little, drink cold water, let sleep be regular, 

Live in peace with all, shun every kind of war : 

Above all, preserve intact a good conscience, 

V^oid toward God, woman, man, of all^ offense. ■ 

Now, having told you things that you all know. 
I say good night, and leave the question so. 



* I believe Armstmng's poem on Health to be the best didactic 
t>ootu ever written. He says this of a hopeless drunkard : 
"And if a friend remains. 
To wish him well he wishes him in heaven." 

tit is Horace who charges Cato with beinff fond of wine. He says: 
" Narratiir el prisci fJatoiiln, 

S'lfV', inero r.aliiissc virtus." _ i 

AV'armed liis virtue with wine! This sounds like satire. 



90 



MILD CONFISCATION. 

One of the great statesmen of the nation 
Proposes for the South " mild confiscation." 
This mild measure is, the South shall pay- 
Five thousand million dollars. At once I say 
This would be without its like in all history, 
Any already writt'n or that is to be ; 
A sum much larger than the British debt, 
Or that any State has e'er contracted yet ; 
One third of all the hard coin now,'mong men . 
Of all countries. How pay, who to pay, and when? 
With land and cotton, is the prompt reply ; 
But this cannot be done, all know as well as I, 
Except the experienced projector 
Of the measure, father and protector. 
Alas ! that human reason so far has fled, 
That that gray, strong, reverend, honorable head 
Should propose a thing so utterly Utopian, 
Unjust, unequal, oppressive, and agrarian. 
Five thousand millions from a land so wasted ! 
That has the cup of wrath so deeply tasted. 
Has been so desolated and depleted. 
So frequently in hard-fought fields defeated. 
Is plainly an impossibility, 
As all but one, I think, must clearly see: 
That one, a keen, far-seeing man, we know; 
But wise men blunder; pity 'tis, but 'tis so. 
All the cotton, chattels, ev'ry foot of land. 
If sold, would not that heavy sum command. 
The South has lost two thirds of all she owned, 
Of all she had, and what to her was loan'd : 
And now to take the rest and call it mild ! 
To rae it looks like vengeance, mad and wild. 
We want no more ravaging and confiscation ; 
We want peace, harmony, reconciliation. 
But this mild move is a finality — 
No doubt. Sliould the measure executed be, 



91 

There will not be left in any rebel State 
Aught bat the inhabitants to confiscate. 

I was for the Union, faithfull}' as he, 
From the first shot until the last retreat of Lee, 
And so ever since, 'and shall so remain ; 
But I can't hear such threat'nings, and refrain 
From saying what I think and what believe. 
I can't imagine or at all conceive 
How such fancies enter wise lien's brains ; 
For he is wise who this idea now maintains. 
No more vengeance ! Mildness, generosity, 
Must cure all hatred, rancor, animosity. 
Or cured they can't be soon — may never be. 

Of all the doom'd, not one third are criminal; 
Many men, the women, the cliildren all. 
They have no treason or any crime committed, 
Were morally and legally unfitted. 
To fast,en on them thus constructive crime 
Is wrong now, and will be wrong throughout all time ; 
And to punish them with this mild confiscation 
Unworthy is of this great Christian nation. 
Should this'measure mild be carried througji, 
There can be no more Union firm and true. 
As those may see who have the shortest sight, 
If the whole truth they seek, and love the right. 
^ Then, too, where the logic of the four years' fight? 
'Tis unjust, unchristian, unheroic. 
And beyond the patience of a saint or stoic. 
" Not strain'd, of mercy is the quality ;" 
That Shaksp.eare's line is no frivolity 
Let us show, then, by a generous policy. 

Note. — Horace Groeloy, in his anti-eonfiscatiou speech at Rich- 
mond, on the loth of May, spoke of $500,000,01)0 as the sum to be 
levied on the South by tlic proposed contispatlon. lam under the 
impression— Wiis wlion I wrote the forej/tnins; — that Mr. Stevens 
mentioned $5,000,000,000. It is itninatcrial wliich, as it would be 
impossiblte to get either from the South. ]\Ir. (Jreeley said if all the 
property in the South was put up at auction it would not bring 
$500,000,000. 



92 



THE DOG. 

" Lo ! the poor Indian ! whose unhitorcd mind 
Sees God in clouds, or hears Him in tlie wind; 
His soul proud science never taught to stray 
Far as the solar walk or milky way; 
Yet simple nature to his hope has giv'n 
Behind the cloud-topp'd hill a humbler heav'n." 
* ********** 

"lie thinks, admitted to that equal sky, 
His fiiithful dog shall bear him company." [Pope. 

I who but lately sang the ?jeastly hog. 

Now sing a nobler animal, the dog ; 

The associate, servart, and the friend of man, 

As such known almost since the world began. 

We read of him in history everywhere, 

And he is generally of good character. 

Bad dogs there are, but they are badly taught ; 

And being bad is not always their own fault. 

Man and beast without any education 

Fall swiftly into sad degeneration. 

The dog has more mind and more ability. 

More improvableness and more docility, 

I thinkf thairany other known quadruped. 

No matter which, or where caught, or where bred. 

Pope mentions the ''half reasoning elephant;" 

That he is superior to the dog I can't 

Admit. The dog in matter of affections 

Is ahead of all animals of all complexions, 

Size or habits, whether tame or whether wild, 

The lion fierce, the tiger fiercer, and the mild ; 

The dog is noticeably ahead of all. 

Great, gigantic, middle siz'd, and small ; 

The restless monkey and domestic cat 

Are far behind him, and must remain at that ; 

They can't o'ertake him, not even imitate. 

So superior he in every land and state. 

In no other beast can man confide, rely 

Upon his honesty — this will none deny. 

His master he assists in his vocation ; 



93 

Works, obeys, and undersltviuls the relation. 

He guards his person, guards liie house, the farm. 

Is ever vigilant to see and to repel all harm ; 

Robbers, murderers, felons, the housebreaker, 

Find in him a foe and fierce 'thief-taker. 

He does this, much more, and had he but speech 

We know not wliat might be within his reach ; 

For ideas he has, thouglits and judgment, too, 

But wanting speech he knows not always what to do. 

He knows in general what to him is said ; 

He listens, comprehends, and would be afraid 

To disobey his orders or to disregard 

In house or field, abroad with cattle, in the yard. 

A useful coadjutor and companion he, 

A pattern of obedience and of industry. 

Could he but speak he would be vastly wiser ; 

Then counselor, agent, and adviser ; 

Would give-good advice without reward or* fee ; 

An exponent be of old fidelity. 

In Constantinople dogs run free. 

Make laws, have of their own a polity, 

A govermment, and administration 

To enforce a just and due subordination. 

I've read this — do not vouch its verity ; 

To invent I would not have temerity. 

Some dogs have acquir'd great praise and fame, 
And made a landed, wide, resounding name 
As warriors, philanthropists, and so i'orth ; 
Some were benevolent and of great worth. 
Tli^ Spaniards at the Conquest made a soldier 
Of the dog, and none were better — bolder. 
The -greatest dogs that history speaks of are those 
Mount Saint Bernard dogs, that work 'midst ice and 

snows. 
Save travelers from inevitable death, 
And bring back the failing evanescent breath. 
With brandy bottle from their neck suspended, 
Many a poor traveler have they befriended. 
One glorious dog, from the record it appears, 



94 

Had sav'd forty persons in a few years. 
Being old, lie was discharg'd upon a pension, 
And sent to a milder climate. I mention 
This from history. He liv'd respected, died 
Regretted, and his fam,e was publish'd wide. 

A jpit^'^'tis that that fell incurable disease, 
Canine madness, should kill by thousands these 
Poor brutes, that die wholly ignorant of their crime, 
Are dispatch'd without reason, w^ithout rhyme, 
And sent to their account before their time. 
Any one, or right or wrong, may raise the cry. 
Mad dog! No help then, the poor wretch must die, 
Though possibly of sounder mind than he 
Who thus consigns him to death and infamy. 
No pardon then, no respite, no delay, 
But he is slaughter' d forthwith and sti'aightway 
By bludgeon, poison, or by revolver; 
This last of many mooted points resolver.'^ 
By animal, I mean here non-rationals ; 
Not at all that "paragon of animals," 

" That quintessence of dust," (most noble clod,) 

'' And in apprehension how like a god !" 
For this Prince Hamlet is my authority. 
The sad son of Denmark's buried majesty. 

No more ; much I wish'd to say I leave unsaid ; 
Small loss to those for whom this song is made. 



Note.— It is an historical fact that a do?— a small spaniel— saved the 
Dutch republic in 1572 by saving the life of its master, the Prince of 
Orange, in a nightattack by the Spaniards ; and this it did, not from 
mere accident, but by intelligence, fidelity, and vigilance. , Thirty 
seconds delay and the Prince would have been lost, and with him the 
ffreat cause. This is a finer story than the saving of Rome by the 
cackling of the geese in the capitol, and vet comparatively how 
little is it known ! (See Motley's Dutch Uepuhlic, volume L'. page 398.) 

Chinese moralists say, Thou shall not eat dog's flesh. Neverthe- 
less the Chinese are dog-eaters, as well as some other peoples. 



*For resolvent. 



95 



THE PYRAMIDS. 

•The Pyramids — those supeugtnictures vast, 
Built as though intended time to out hist, 
They crumbling are, though not crumbling fast. 
But must inevitably go at last. 

The explorers and savaiils v:ho now write 
About thera — their length, breadth, height, 
In future times will dififerently indite 
Their papers, and discuss little save their site, 

Where once they*stood majestically, grand, 
O'ershadowin^ the circumjacent land. 
Where stood they once that now no longer stand? 
So prais'd by every rambling tourist's hand. 

Where are they? Level'd by all effacing time, 
That spares nor youth nor manhood in its prime, 
Nor the magnificent, nor the sublime. 
Nor storied bust, nor prose, nor loftiest rhyme. 

The Pyramids great men have look'd upon ; 
Plato, whom the French please to call Platon. 
Macedonian Philip's brave and fighting son, 
And last, not least, the Great Napoleon. 

Who built them? has been ask'd three thousand years. 
As yet no rational response appears ; 
They say a king of this or that dynasty, 
But know no^more, my friend, than you or I. 

King Cheops built, they saj', the'great Pyramid, 
But 'tis all dark whether he did not or did ; 
In hoar antiquity it is all hid — 
They say, likewise, entomb" d was he amid. 

Now " not a pinch of dust remains of Cheops," 
Sings Byron : " so you and I have no hopes." 
The learned traveler in dense darkness gropes, 
And in despair he muses and be mopes. 



96 

But wliy built? That is still a question vex'd. 
Dark, uniathora'd, inscrutable, perplex'd. 
To come at wliicli savants have oft risk'd their necks, 
But gave it up as insolv&ble, complex. 

Some say, to gratify a brutal tyrant's whim ; 
Some, for religion, false and dark and dim ; 
Some as trophies, by some conqueror grim — 
So to get the truth the prospect is but slim. 

Some for purposes astronomical, 
For tombs, which seems to me chimerical; 
And all of the whole medley apociyphal. 
And somewhat puerile and nonsensical. 

All, all is lost, even the builder's name, 
Who he was, his achievements, and his fame ; 
So all conclusions "are impotent and lame," 
And these ray rhymes are just about the san\e. 



THE PRESS IN SPAIN. 

II s'est etabli dans Madrid un systeme de liberie sur la vente do 
productions, ques'ctend a celle dc de la prcsse; (.'i quo pourvu que 
jene parle en mes 6crits, ni de I'autoritd ni du culte. ni de la politi- 
que, ni dela morale, nidesgens en jdace, ni des corps en credit, ni de 
I'opera., ni des autres spectacles, ni de pcrsonne qui tient d, quelque- 
chose, je puis tout imprimer librc?ncnt sous rinspcction de deux on 
trois ceuscurs. — Licaumaucuais, Figaro. 

In Madrid there is a species of free trade. 
Which of the press has been applied ifi aid ; 
So that if in my writings I say nought. 
But speak of all with reverence, as I ought ; 
Of men in place, and of the holy church ; 
Of politics ; nor into hiorals pry and search ; 
Nor speak of pensioners, nor of rank official ; 
Nor of the opera, nor of things judicial; 
Nor any spectacle Avhatever criticise, 
And the rights of every person recognize ; 
Then I may print, it being understood 



97 

That three members of the censorhood 
Inspect my writings and give approbation 5 
If not, tlien certain is my condemnation. 

NoTE.-This translation is not literal, but does not exas^erato 
rj^^I''ll';r^/'f wrote the Jfim^tge 0/ Figaro nearly a hundred years 
Mf.Mi h r • "i""^ after a dozen, revolutions and many attempts to 
estab i.sh froodom ot the press mi Franco, still what he says of the 
condition of the press in Madrid, meaning Paris, is with no erea* 

mff.rr„ iJ""^'' 1^ "'*^, '1 \'> i'>^"°« u>irt«r Louis Irrpoleon.^X 
makes the trench people bolievc that he is in favor of all kindrol 

rho"T'"fHn''n'V"'""'^^"'?'?'Y-,'""^ particularly anion- what ho oalh 
the Latin nations, of which he said Mexico was one, when ho sont 
Maxiiuiliaa there to play Emperor. Mexico a Latin nation! The 
omporor is a little crotchety about the Latin nations There are in 
MfowThypo^thes"^'. • ''^'"^ ^^ "''"' '^^'^^'"'^ "'^^ ^'= '^^'^^^' 


THE GERMAN BARDS. 

*■ Sie singen laut in hohen chor. 

Voin tod furs Vatorland uns vor; 
Doch kainint ein einziger Husar 
Uud lauft die ganze harden schaar." [Glcims. UU. 

TRANSLATION. 

Loud sing the bards, a valiant band, 
Of dying for our faliierland, 

With patriotic disposition ; 
Then comes along a lone Hussar, 
And all these singing sons of war 

Put quick their heels in requisition. 



ANVIL OR HAMMER. 

"Du musst steigen odcr sinken. 
Da musst hersohen und gewinnen. 
Oder dienen und verlieren. 
Leiden oder triumphiren — 
Amboss Oder Hammer seyn." [Goethe. 

FREE TRAN.SLATION. 

You must sink or you must rise, 

Go down below, or upwards to the skies ; 

You must rule and struggle, fight and win, 

Or live downtrodden ne'er to rise again — 

Anvil or Hammer is the alternative, 

For all that win and lose, for all that live. 



98 



KANT'-S TRIAD— (Put into rhyme. 

" The general to the army says : no reasoning, obey ; 
The financier — no reasoniner, but pny; 
The priest — no reasoning, but believe all I say." 

[Katif. 

This Kant is the great Immatinel Kant, 

Long of Germany the glory and the vaunt, 

Who, in his Critical Philosophy, 

With other deep thinkers makes qviite free ; 

Dissents from Leibnitz, Locke, and all, 

In his speculations metaphysical ; 

All who had preceded him in deep thinking. 

At the source of thought and knowledge drinking; 

Abstruse, profound, hard to be understood. 

But gives sumptuous, intellectual food 

For those who love such fanciful inquiries ; 

In which truth at the bottom of a well lies, 

And that so deep 'tis quite unfathomable, 

And none to pull her up have yet been able. 

Hard terms his, multeity, morhdily, 

And some harder ; and taken in totality, 

'Tis staggering to one's rationality. 

Kant's writing? seem to be a little skeptical, 

But of that by writers he's acquitted all. 

Humboldt says that in this he's fortunate, 

As he and others met a different fate. 

These systems all of metaphysics 

Seem to me but exalted dialectics 

Of ingenious and hard-thinking writers, 

Who as much for fame as truth are fighters. . . 

The business is to know and analyze the brain, 

Its powers and functions — an undertaking vain. 

And must ever be. A system has its day. 

So that in fifty years it must give v^ay. 

Another takes its place because 'tis newer, 

Not because 'tis more specious or truer. 

And so in a circle 'twill go round and round, 

Till back to Aristotle we'll be found. 



99 

Now HamiUon is at the pinnacle, 

And by some is thought to be a miracle. 

May be ; but he might see 7nene on the wall, 

As may every writer metaphysical. 

God made the brain a thinking apparatus, 

And its workings can be never known to ua. 



EGOMET: MYSELF. 

Of ray life the clock's yet clicking, 
Inaudibly sometimes ticking; 
The flame of life is dull and flicking; 
Through the world my way I'm picking, 
Not finding peace, but ever seeking — 
In the slough of despond am sticking. 

Old am I ; four and seventy and past, 
At which I stand somewhat aghast ; 
I've liv'd too long and liv'd too fast, 
Have soon to close the scene at last ; 
Oblivious of the present, past, 
Must in the yawning grave be cast. 

What in that dark, cold home and drear 

I have to meet and have to fear 

I've no perception full and clear ; 

Let me the best I can prepare 

To meet the things contingent there, 

And bear the burdens I must bear. 

Left to myself to sink or swim, 
Down, down I go, but trusting Him — 
Though hope with me is scant and slim — 
Him trusting, who death's terrors grim 
Can put to flight, I may get a gleam 
Ofth' "eternal, coeternal beam." 



100 

But though heav'n deserving not, 
My sins may be forgiv'n, forgot, 
As has been many a sinner's lot 
Who has in time forgiveness sought — 
^Yith Christ's atoning blood been bought; 
And only thus to heav'n has got. 

Put Him your hope and trust in, 
Leaving yourself no foul lust in, 
Renounce all you have disgust in, 
Be nothing ever unjust in, 
The balance here all is dust in ; 
Do this, then Him have no distrust in. 



TWO VISITS. 

First Visit — 1813. 

tt is just four and fifty years ago 

I found myself in the village Buffalo ; 

Now a great, populous city as all know, 

Then a poor scatt' ring wooden village small 

Of fifty modest houses, and that was all, 

Burnt soon afterwards by the invaders. 

Who acted less like gallant foes than raiders. * 

I resolv'd hence to go to Niagara, 

Being but twenty miles or so away ; 

No horse, no hack, no coach could be hir'd, 

But with a desire to see being fully fired 

Off I started with a resolution stout 

To walk courageously the distance out. 

Through mud, musqultoes, forests, shocking roads, 

No carriages, no wagons, no carts with loads. 

I stopp'd for the night at a small house, 

Where were a few idlers on a carouse. 



*The British. It was a sorry exploit. 



101 

A scant supper, and for a bed a board, 
Were all that forest tavern could afford ; 
The musquitoes gave me music for my blood. 
Whose bloody borings impatiently I stood ; 
Was off as rose the illuminator of the day, 
And went trudging, not swiftly, on my way. 
Within three hours I reach'd the cataract, 
Where, save water, the locality all lack'd ; 
No village, and but one miserable dwelling ; 
No life, no noise, no buying, and no selling ; 
Silence and solitude, and tranquillity — 
Not even that small current coin, civility ; 
No one to be civil, or be otherwise — 
I look'd inquisitively with all ray eyes. 
Loud the noise of the water's vast volume 
As it came down in sweeping, solid column ; 
Whilst striking and impressive was the scenery: 
More so impossible for traveler's eyes to see. 
All had a primeval look; of mankind 
Traces few ; no vestiges of hand or mind ; 
Nothing but that awfully resounding Fall, 
lint that enough for grandeur, and for all. 
1 attempt not to describe, 'twould be a failure 
And an abortion, I am very sure. 
I'^anny Kemble said, '' Who can describe it, 

God I'' If she could not I am not fit, 

1 know, to undertake to do what she 
Would not, it would be an absurdity.* 



* Some suppose that the Pall was once at or about Lake Ontario. 
a,«'l has been about forty thousand years receding to where it now 
in. If this is so, in a hundred thousand it may be at Lake Erie, will 
'-■inpty the lake, and leave a delta which may one d.ay be as fertile 
and as populous as the delta of tlie Nile was in the time of the 
ancient Egyptian kin!?s. Nia2:;u-a is remarkable for its vast quantity 
of water, is about one hundred and fifty feet hi^h. There are falls 
uiuch higher, as at Ta(iuendauia, near Bosota, South America. It 
is about seven hundred feet hisjh — some say nine hundred — but the 
volume of water is small compared with Niagara. General Harri- 
::on, who saw it in 182',), said that water poured from the top of a tree 
out of a teapot would as much resemble Taquendama .as this resem- 
bles Niagara. I saw it also, and thought the General's illustration 
a pretty good one. Some have put the fall atone hundred and thirty- 
?y!Vt-n feet— some at one hundred and eighty, and more. These wore 
the early French explorers. 



102 

What saw 1 there? A world of wiiters, and no more. 
Seen, perhaps, ten thousand years or so beforr' : 
On an old cedar tree I saw engrav'd 
A hundred names, thus from oblivion sav'd: 
So thought the curious artists, I suppose; 
But who they were now no one cares or laiows. 
I did not go in for the vanity, 
Wishing not to compromise my sanity : 
I gaz'd an hour, and then return' d to BuflUlo, 
Whence I went on this excursion, as vou know. 



Second Visit — 185o. 

In the year eighteen hundred fifty-three 
It was ray luck again in Buffalo to be ; 
Just forty years after ray first visit, when 
The people number'd of scores but ten : 
But now there is a large, busy population : 
Much surpris'd I at the transformation ; 
But it is the same throughout the nation. 
I took at nine or ten o'clock the train. 
And in an hour was at Niagara again. 
Things I recollected forty years before 
I saw not, by rae to be seen never more. 
Now I found a fine town, a busy one, 
A bridge where I thought there could be noin 
Fine hotels on both sides of the river, 
In the season full to overflowing ever. 
Much travel, much spending and enjoyment. 
Much activity, and much employment. 
And this the identical locality 
(Now all mirth, sport, and joviality) 
I found forty years before a solitude, 
On which travelers did not oft intrude. 
To me the change was almost incredible. 
But it was so ; obvious and tangible. 
Even the old cedar was entirely gone. 



103 

And of tlie immortal names inscrib'd not one 
Itenmin'd to show by whom tiie feat was done. 
Kut this consoles: the time will surely come 
When loftiest monument the same doom 
Will meet, and all memorials (inJ a tomb. 
So he whose name is gras^'d with penknife on a l;'«.u 
Will one day be immortal, just as he 
Whose name now on a granite shaft we see. 
1 better can, I thinlc, than most of men 
Understand Rip Van Winkle, when 
He wak'd up from his long snooze of twenty years. 
As in the old Dutch chronicles appears. 
Or made so t' appear by that magician, 
Irving — a genius and ingenious man ; 
With this diffrence: 'tis hard to say of my two 
\ isits whether the first or last 's the true. 



TO PHENISSA. 

" Das schonstc was ich konii und wUhlc. 
Ist in der schiinen Form die suhone seele." ' Srfii/l'-r. 

Whatnfost delights and charms me on the wiiole. 
Is in a lovely form a lovely soul. 

[Bad irnnsliiiiaii. 

Though fair and beautiful as she. 

Men call'd Anadyomene, 
That rose resplendent from the sea, 
Venus, that bright divinity ; 

It would not do, it would not do. 
Unless your soul was lovely too. 

Had you Aspasia's charms and wit. 

And all her eloquence with it: 
Her unmatch'd loveliness and grace 
And her large attractiveness of face, 
It would not do, it would not do. 
Unless your soul was lovely too. 



104 

I'ossess'd you Cleopatra's wiles, 

\\ ith them her all-subduing smiles, 

Could bring all conquerors to your feet, 

And make tliem losel deeds commit ; 

It would not do, it would not do, 

Unless your soul was lovely too. 

Vi'ere yours Arraida's arts and parts. 

Could win like her all heroes' hearts ; 
And make them from their duty swerve, 
And all her whims and passions serve, 
It would not do, it would not do. 
Unless your soul was lovely toc>. 

Had you Clorinda's martial skill, 

Her prowess and commanding will ; 
Like her a heroine in the field, 

AVho chose to die and would not yield. 
It would not do, it would not do, 
Unless like her's your soul was noble too. 



MAXIMILIAN. « • 

Ill-wi-av'd amljitlon, how much art thou .shrunki [Shakspea n- . 

(J Maximilian! Maximilian 0! 

Why when went the French did you not go 

From the inauspicious soil of Mexico? 

Having got a hint they could no longer stay, 

They practic'd valor's best part and march'd away. 

liut you! What hope, of foreign help denuded, 

Had you to keep the place where you intruded? 

How be so bamboozled by Napoleon, 

And to your ruin be thus deluded on? 

And you a Hapsburg! That great, good, wise man, 

Rudolph, for your ancestor you well can 

Claim. what a sad degeneration ! 

What ineffable- infatuation 



105 

Could make you for a moment think of taking 
At his hands a crown of his own making, 
And you his instrument ! I pity you, Prince Max, 
And should be glad to hear you had made tracks ^ 
Got off safe and sound from Queretaro, 
Where you are in great danger, we all know. 
They shot an emperor* once, their countryman ; 
Then what hopes rational and founded can 
You have that they'll let you oft' with a whole skin, 
^Vhen they po roughly treat their kith and kin? 
Should you be massacred, what then will say 
The great p7-estidigifaleur of the day? 

Prince Max I You've shed too freely 7/?6eroi blood. 
Without the shadow of a reason good, 
Officers of rank you order' d to be shot, 
Because they were for Juarez, for you were not. 
This was " the head and front of their offending" — 
A great error. Prince ! and past all mending. 
If lex talionis they apply to you. 
Your days are number'd, and they are but few. 
We have from high authority the word, 
Th&t they who take shall perish by the sword — 
That is, if they make of it unrighteous use ; 
We know it may be used without abuse. 
'Tis said the French constrain'd you to that act; 
This might a little mitigate the fact, 
But still yours the responsibility ; 
You were Chief, acknowledged so to be. 
Juarez sees in you nought but a filibuster,! 
And he is right; you have no business there. 
Yonr patron can no more give you Mexico 
Than give you heaven above or hell below. 
Your folly and his wrong have brought you thus low ; 
So low, the worst I fear to learn and know 



♦Yturbide, in 1822. 

tTho word //I'ins/c)- is derived from the Spanisli yt/t7<u«<cro,- this 
from the French /^/AiwU'er, which is the English word freebooter gal- 
liei/ed. Thus we have fiaaWy filibuster iot freebooter. This i.s a. 
little curious. 



106 

Hhoiilij you be left to Escobedo. 

He's bent on swift and red retaliation, 

Without regard to rank or name or statio'n : 

Nought cares he for archduke, emp'ror titular. 

Nor all the men, nor all the gods of war. 

He's fierce and furious, truculent and grim. 

To slaughter prisoners is no grief to him. 

He shot a hundred, privates every one — 

A cruel act, not necessary to be done. 

If there's necessity for retaliation 

It ought to fall on those of rank and station, 

lievenge to him is sweet, he likes it red — 

Six muskets, one discharge, and you are dead. 

'i'he world will not at your's as Charles's* '' name grow 

pale," 
But still 'twill •' point a moral or adorn a tale.'' 

May 20, 1867. 



^Charles XII, King of Sweden. 



hM. 



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